Date Palm Byproducts: A Springboard for Circular Bio Economy by Hamed EL-Mously & Mohamad Midani & Eman A. Darwish

Author:Hamed EL-Mously & Mohamad Midani & Eman A. Darwish
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9789819904754
Publisher: Springer Nature Singapore

8.6 Biochar Production from Date Palm Waste: Charring Temperature, Induced Changes in Composition and Surface Chemistry

A research [42] has been conducted with the objective of investigating the effect of pyrolysis temperature on date palm derived biochar characteristics to use it for agronomic or environmental management. Biochar—as a stable carbon-enriched material—is produced by thermal conversion using unstable carbon-enriched materials [43]. The biochar is being added to the soil to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions [44]. Many researchers devoted their endeavors to the application of biochar for improving the soil properties and fertility, as well as the remediation of contaminated soils [45–47]. Other researchers [48, 49] suggested the use of biochars as alternative sorbents for the removal of different types of organic and inorganic contaminants from aqueous solutions. But the effects of biochar on long-term carbon sequestration, soil fertility and environmental remediation highly depend on its physicochemical properties [50, 51]. The main factors affecting the quality of biochar and main properties are the feedstock type and pyrolysis temperature [47, 52–54]. The pyrolysis temperature is a key factor in volatilizing some elements such as N and S and in concentrating other elements such as C [55–57].

To conduct this study, date palm products of pruning were sourced from a farm near to Riyadh city including leaves and spadix stems. The material was air-dried and chopped to small pieces. Pyrolysis of this material has been conducted in a steel electric pyrolysis reactor of height 22 cm and diameter 7 cm. The samples were pyrolyzed to temperatures 300, 400, 500, 600, 700 and 800 °C at a rate 5 °C/min, the produced biochars were left to cool inside the furnace overnight. The proximate analysis of the samples has been conducted according to ASTM D 1762-84 standard method [58] including moisture, ash and volatile matter in biochar. The total elemental content of C,H,N and S in biochar samples were measured by CHNS analyzer (seriesΙΙ, PerkinElmer, USA). The oxygen percent has been calculated as: 100-(C + H + N + S + ash%) and the atomic ratios of H, C, O/C, O + N/C and O + N + S/C were also calculated as indicative of aromaticity and polarity.

The research results showed that the highest yield of biochar was achieved at the lowest pyrolysis temperature (300 °C). The fixed C, ash and basic cations of biochar increased while its moisture, volatiles and elemental composition (O, H, N and S) deceased with increasing pyrolysis temperature. Based on the research results, the date palm derived biochars at pyrolysis temperature ≥ 500 °C with a volatile content less than 10% and O/C of 0.02–0.05 may exhibit a high sequestration potential. Biochars produced at high temperature (> 500 °C) could be more resistant to mineralization through biological processes than biochars pyrolyzed at lower temperature (< 500 °C), thus becoming more effective in mitigating greenhouse gas emission into the environment. However, applying high pyrolysis biochars to arid soils with high alkalinity may be critical due to its high pH. Our results suggest that the date

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