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A dual-fluidized bed reactor was applied in the pyrolysis of pine wood and catalytic upgrading of the pyrolysis vapors over H-Beta zeolite. The temperatures of the pyrolysis and catalytic upgrading reactors were 400 and 440°C, respectively. The effect of space velocity on the yield and composition of pyrolysis products was investigated. It was found that the catalytic upgrading affects all pyrolysis products, except the char yield which can be considered constant at all space velocities. By lowering the space velocity the gas, water and coke yields increased at the cost of the organic phase of the bio-oil. The coke yield was fairly high, 11 wt% of the biomass, at the lowest space velocity. The spent catalysts could be regenerated by burning away the formed coke and thereby regaining the surface area and most of the acid sites.

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The traditional method to isolate cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) is to subject cellulosic materials to strong acid hydrolysis by mineral acids, which usually causes problems such as corrosion of equipment, the need for large amounts of water, the difficulty of acid recovery, and over‐degradation of cellulose. Thus, a green and sustainable approach for the preparation of CNCs was developed where mild acid hydrolysis with diluted oxalic acid was used. The reaction kinetics of different preparation parameters, such as reaction temperature, oxalic acid dose, addition of HCl, and reaction time were thoroughly investigated. A high yield of up to 85 % was achieved by mild oxalic acid hydrolysis in comparison to the yield of 35 % using the most common approach with sulfuric acid hydrolysis. The CNCs from the above approach have a high thermal stability, that is, a maximum thermal degradation temperature of 350 °C in comparison to 200 °C when sulfuric acid hydrolysis was used. Importantly, oxalic acid solutions were readily recovered, and exhibited consistently high performance in several continuous runs of reaction. The hydrolysates contained mostly monomeric sugars, which could be further utilized for chemical or biofuel production.