Acid treatment effecting the physiochemical structure and thermal degradation of biomass

Abstract Biomass is not a mature industry as it concerned with many technical challenges such as ash slagging, heated surface corrosion and fouling which threat safe operation of biomass conversion and increase maintenance cost. The leaching process can eliminate/reduce ash forming constituents from biomass which results the improvement in bio-fuel properties. The wheat straw (WS) sample was chosen for this study and treated with three different diluted acid solutions (CH3COOH, HCl and H2SO4) and their mixture. This study was aimed to maximize ash extraction and energy contents, and to investigate the effect of leaching on thermal degradation and physiochemical structure of wheat straw samples. Acid treatment has significant effects on thermal behavior and char contents of WS samples which were indicated by Thermogravimetric (TGA) and differential Thermogravimetric (DTG) analysis. The physiochemical structure was analyzed by Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Brunauer Emmett Teller (BET) method and FTIR spectroscopy. This study demonstrated that acid treatment has ability to reduce ash concentration, which increased energy and char contents of biomass.