Using chemometric analysis to classify and confirm the origin of bio-char

In this article, we present a method for detecting the amount of polymer added in the biomass pyrolysis process to obtain fuel for energy generation. The main aim of these research was to develop a new methodology to determine the amount of polypropylene added in the pyrolysis process, which was used as a case study of the type of impurities that can contaminate biomass. In our best knowledge these methods, based on chemometric methods combined with spectral data from Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) applied to bio-char analysis are new one and could allow a more accurate control of bio-char than existing methods such as selective dissolution analysis of the C-14 content. As a chemomteric methods in this studies the classification analysis (CA) and principal component analysis (PCA) were applied. Thereby we could describe relation between the third principal component (calculated from FTIR spectra) and amount of polypropylene additive depending on the pyrolysis temperature. To the best of our knowledge, there have been no reports in the literature on determining the amount of polymer added in using a bio-char control instead of raw biomass for co-firing. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.