Room: King Willem Alexander
Date: Thursday, 21 May 2026
Time: 16:15 - 17:15 CEST
Session code 5CO.10
Application of pyrolysis products
Biomass Pyrolysis for Biocarbon Production: Challenges and Lessons Leant During Process Scaleups
Short Introductive summary
Biocarbon is expected to play a significant role in sustainable metal and steel production. Biomass pyrolysis processes, especially slow pyrolysis to produce biochar, have reached near commercial stages. However, biocarbon for metallurgical applications needs to be highly carbonized and require significantly different processing condition, especially higher pyrolysis temperatures (500-900 °C). Low biocarbon yield associated with its high processing temperatures needs to be addressed for a sound economic performance. In addition, various technical issues that are not visible at laboratory-scale investigation become relevant during the process scale up, especially related to thermal management both surrounding the reactor and post production char cooling and storage. This study presents various technical challenges and lessons learnt during our effort to scale up the biomass pyrolysis technology for biocarbon production aimed at the use in steel industry. During the last 10 years, we have investigated biomass pyrolysis process in a laboratory-scale single particle reactor, pilot scale auger reactors (500 g/h and 20 kg/h feed), and a demonstration scale rotary kiln (500 kg/h feed).
Presenter
Kentaro UMEKI
Luleå University of Technology, Division of Energy Science, SWEDEN
Presenter's biography
Kentaro Umeki is Professor in Energy Engineering at Luleå University of Technology. His group is developing gasification-based biofuel production technologies as well as pyrolysis technologies for high-quality biocarbon and liquid production. Umeki has co-authored ca. 80 peer-reviewed articles.
Biographies and Short introductive summaries are supplied directly by presenters and are published here unedited
Co-authors:
N. Norberg, Harads Arctic Heat, Boden, SWEDEN
Y.T. Kilic, Luleå University of Technology, SWEDEN
M. Dal Belo Takehara, Luleå University of Technology, SWEDEN
C. Samuelsson, Future Eco, Boden, SWEDEN
J. Eriksson, Future Eco, Boden, SWEDEN
Session reference: 5CO.10.2