Vol.:(0123456789) 1 3 Waste Biomass Valor DOI 10.1007/s12649-017-0115-7 ORIGINAL PAPER Evaluation of Autothermal Peat Pyrolysis Realization for Fuel Processing Technologies Roman Tabakaev 1  · Alexander Astafev 1  · Yury Dubinin 2  · Nikolay Yazykov 2  · Vadim Yakovlev 2   Received: 4 June 2017 / Accepted: 16 October 2017 © Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017 Introduction Despite the fact that fossil fuels are still readily available today there are many reasons to use renewable energy sources (RES). The need to involve RES in the power indus- try is especially relevant to the areas remote away from cen- tralized power supply systems. These regions receive power from small power plants and boilers fred by imported solid and diesel fuels. As a result, power rates are several times higher than those for the centralized power supply [1–3]. The global interest in RES is rising year to year [4–7] because of their prevalence, environmental friendliness and the possibility to obtaining energy independence from other countries or regions. The share of RES in the global energy balance has already exceeded 5–9% [5, 6]. Moreover, according to the expert evaluation of standard electricity generation cost [8] including healthcare and environmental expenses, the generation of 1 MW·hour based on RES is already more economic than at current coal power plants. The use of RES, however, involves a number of main- streaming challenges stemming from climatic and geo- graphical factors [1, 9] such as short daylight hours, frequent precipitation, wind barriers and low air temperatures. In this respect, the most versatile type of RES is biomass (wood, household, agricultural, and wood wastes, etc.). Peat can be classifed as “slowly renewable biomass” [10] due to its massive reserves (250–500 billion tons in the world [11]), sustainability (the natural peat increment exceeds the volume of its using [12]) and wide geographical range. In a number of countries peat plays an important role in the energy balance. For example, in 2011 the share of peat- generated power in the total power was 5.30% in Ireland, 4.54% in Finland, and 1.85% in Belarus. On the world-wide scale, however, the share of such energy does not exceed 0.028% [12]. Abstract In a number of countries peat plays an important role in the energy balance. However, the share of peat-gen- erated power on a worldwide scale does not exceed 0.028%. The reason for such a low involvement of peat in the energy balance is a number of properties hindering its use for power production. Pyrolysis is a promising feld of using peat for power generation, but the need to supply a large amount of heat for it to occur is the barrier to mainstreaming the tech- nologies of pyrolysis. In this work we study the composition of peat from two deposits in Tomsk region and the products of their pyrolysis as well as exothermic efects in order to identify the conditions necessary for autothermal pyrolysis. We used the methods of physical experiment and diferential thermal analysis to explore the total heat of pyrolysis and assessed the feasibility of autothermal pyrolysis by calcula- tion. The research has shown that with a moisture content of < 8.85% the pyrolysis of peat sample No. 2 is autothermal. The pyrolysis of peat sample No. 1 cannot be autothermal even if the sample is dried. This stems from the high con- tent of mineral matter, which includes a large amount of carbonates. Keywords Peat · Low-temperature pyrolysis · Diferential thermal analysis · Heat efect · Autothermal process * Roman Tabakaev TabakaevRB@tpu.ru 1 National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University, Lenin Avenue, 30, Tomsk 634050, Russia 2 Borescov Institute of Catalysis SB RAS, Acad. Lavrentiev Avenue, 5, Novosibirsk 630090, Russia