Nitrogen Removal from Wood Laminated Flooring Waste by Low-Temperature Pyrolysis

The optimisation of wood laminated flooring decontamination was studied to improve energy recovery. This work addresses the first step of a novel nitrogen-containing biomass waste-to-energy process that has been previously published. Pyrolysis in N2 atmosphere performed at different temperatures (523–673 K) and different durations led to the removal of nitrogen contained in the material, mainly in the forms of ammonia (NH3) and isocyanic acid (HNCO), as analysed by Fourier Transform infrared spectrometry. The optimisation of this step consists in determining a [temperature, duration] of treatment parameters couple to obtain a maximum nitrogen removal coupled with the minimum energy loss in the residue. Amounts of removed nitrogen were determined through ultimate analysis, and energy available in the “decontaminated” residues was obtained by calorimetry. Pre-treatment at 548 K during 11 min appeared to be the most promising, with 65 % of nitrogen removed and mass and energy losses of 18.7 and 8.9 %, respectively.