Preparation and analysis of pyrolysis oils

Abstract

A critical review of the methods for producing pyrolysis waste oils was carried out, the possibilities and limitations of each approach were discussed. Liquid pyrolysis products (pyrolysis oils) are promising source of valuable chemical compounds, and can be also used as a fuel. A reliable analysis of pyrolysis oils is necessary to study their component composition, basic characteristics and to select the most suitable methods for the extraction of the necessary compounds. It is known that the results of GC-MS analysis of liquid pyrolysis products are usually ambiguous: there are problems of peaks overlapping and incorrect interpretation of the data, due to the complexity of the matrix and the multicomponent composition of the object. The paper presents data on the chemical composition of pyrolysis oils obtained by elemental analysis, IR spectroscopy, NMR spectrometry, GC-MS, GC-GC/MS. Based on the presented results, pyrolysis oil usually contains aromatic compounds, water-soluble substances and hydrocarbons. It was found out that there are conflicting data on the chemical composition of the pyrolysis oils of waste tires in the scientific literature. It is proposed to carry out sequential extraction sample preparation of pyrolysis mixtures to increase the reliability and accuracy of the componential and quantitative composition of the GC-MS method. Obviously, a reliable analysis of complex pyrolysis mixtures without preliminary targeted sample preparation seems unlikely.