Fruit peel waste as pyrolysis feedstock

What is it about?

The fruit wastes, despite being a high-volume waste to be disposed of, also represent a renewable and sustainable resource to be exploited rather than simply disposed by landfilling and composting. Pyrolysis could potentially be used as an alternative technique to convert fruit wastes into potentially useful materials. This study was performed with the aim of revealing the potential of fruit wastes as a pyrolysis feedstock, and also aims to provide useful information as to the suitable operating conditions (e.g. temperature, modes of pyrolysis) in order for optimal recovery of desirable products (e.g. bio-oil, bio-gas, bio-char) from the pyrolysis of fruit wastes.

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Why is it important?

The results show that the fruit wastes can be a suitable feedstock for pyrolysis conversion into bio-oil, bio-gas, and bio-char for further use as potentially useful products such as fuel, chemical feedstock, or catalyst support. The fruit wastes can be pyrolysed at ≥ 400 °C to convert the majority of the waste content into pyrolysis volatiles for recovery as useful bio-oil and bio-gas, and the remaining solid mass can be recovered as bio-char. Fast pyrolysis can be used for optimal recovery of bio-oil and bio-gas whereas slow pyrolysis is favourable in producing biochar from the fruit wastes. To sum up, fruit wastes are highly recommended as the feedstock for pyrolysis recovery instead of being disposed by conventional yet increasingly impracticable approaches such as landfilling and open burning.