Design and Fabrication of an Ablative Pyrolyzer for Production of Bio- lubricants and chemicals in Oil Well Drilling Application

Abstract

In this study, an ablative pyrolyser having 27.1 cm inner diameter, 41.2 cm outer diameter, the full chamber height of 74.7 cm and chamber volume of 40 litres was designed and fabricated. 150KW heater was wounded around the reactor chamber made of stainless steel to provide a higher temperature of up to 1400 °C. The -40 to 105°C capacity heat resistance wires were used to conduct the heater into the electrical panel which has several components such as the contactor, temperature controller, thermocouple wire and so on to give a particular desired working temperature. This pyrolyser applies technology of thermal energy in the heated walls of the pyrolyser being transferred to the biomass by conduction in the absence of oxygen for onward disintegration into gas, bio-oil, and biochar. After fabrication, 12 kg each of Tectona grandis and Rhopalosiphum maidis was fed into the reactor and pyrolyzed at 500 °C, the bio-oil product for both samples were mixed together and distilled at 120 °C and the bio-oil distillate was characterized for density, kinematic viscosity, pH, acid value and free fatty acid content. The bio-oil distillate shows a density of 0.960 g/cc, pH of 7.2, kinematic viscosity of 84 cst and acid value of 42.20 compared to the bio oil crude which showed higher values. This pyrolyser has been found on average to melt 12 kg each of Tectona grandis and Rhopalosiphum maidis to 5353 and 3493 g crude bio-oil respectively for a period of at least 3 h. The mass of bio-char for tectona grandis and Rhopalosiphum maidis were 3325 and 2614 g respectively while the reactor requires 8 h to cool before discharging the bio-char from the reactor. This research work can provide a basic designing formula for effective and workable ablative pyrolyzer fabrication for Nigerian wastes having high energy content.