The 5 th International Conference on IFIB-2012 Industrial Bioprocesses October 7-10, 2012, Taipei Bio-oil from Cassava Peel: Potential Renewable Energy Source Suryadi Ismadji a,* , Yi-Hsu Ju b , Chun Xiang Lin c , Alfin Kurniawan a , Ong Lu Ki a a Department of Chemical Engineering, Widya Mandala Surabaya Catholic University, Kalijudan 37, Surabaya 60114, Indonesia b Department of Chemical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, 43, sec. 4 Keelung Rd., Taipei, 106 Taiwan c Department of Chemical Engineering, The University of Queensland, St Lucia Qld 4072, Australia * Corresponding Author’s E-mail: suryadiismadji@yahoo.com Keywords: Bio-oil; Cassava peel; Pyrolysis; Bio-refinery ABSTRACT In view of environmental consideration, bio-oil produced from agricultural residue can be considered as a potential source of clean and renewable energy since it only produces carbon dioxide during combustion and most of the carbon dioxide produced will be sequestered for the growth of plants. Thermochemical conversion is one of the available technologies to convert biomass into liquid, gas, and/or solid products. In this paper, pyrolysis method was employed to produce biofuel from cassava peel waste. Pyrolysis experiments were carried out in a tubular reactor system. The experiments were carried out in the temperature range of 400 to 600 o C at a heating rate of 20 o C/min. The temperature of the system was maintained by a sensitive PID controller. The uncertainty of temperature measurement is ± 5 o C. During the process, nitrogen gas flow was introduced into the system with a flow rate of 5 L/min. Gaseous products of pyrolysis were cooled down directly in a condenser. The liquid products were analyzed using GC-MS (QP 2010 Shimadzu). The calorific value of bio-oil was determined by the Anton Paar bomb calorimeter according to ASTM D5868-10ae1, while the proximate analysis of raw material and bio-char was analyzed according to ASTM standards. Thermogravimetric analysis was conducted in a TGA/DSC star system (Mettler Toledo) with ramping and cooling rate of 10 o C/min, and nitrogen was employed as gas carrier. In this study, to produce bio-oil from cassava peel, the temperature was found as the most important parameter. The maximum yield of bio-oil (51.2%) was obtained at 525 o C. The yield of bio-oil initially increased with temperature (up to 525 o C) then further increase of temperature resulting in decreasing bio-oil yield. Gross Calorific Value of the bio-oil produced in this study was 27.4 MJ/kg. 1. Introduction In general, the current technologies available to convert biomass into fuel can be classified into three categories based on their process methodologies: thermochemical conversion, thermal, and biochemical. Thermochemical biomass conversion includes a number of processes such as liquefaction, gasification, and pyrolysis [Park et al., 2012]. The core or base of thermochemical conversion is the pyrolysis process. In the pyrolysis process, the decomposition or chemical breakdown of biomass occurring at high temperature without the presence of oxygen. In the pyrolysis process, the biomass is converted directly into solid (bio-char), liquid (bio-oil), and gaseous products. The liquid product or often called as bio-oil may contain chemicals in economical recoverable concentrations and can be upgraded into refined fuels [Volli and Singh, 2012]. Currently, the studies of bio-oil production from a different kind of biomass were conducted by two main types of processes, i.e. pyrolysis and hydrothermal liquefaction. The pyrolysis process requires relatively high temperature and drying of biomass feed stocks is necessary. In the pyrolysis