The impact of blending with poplar wood on the co-pyrolysis characteristics of waste particleboards

Waste particleboards are largely generated from discarded furniture, floor, and other building materials, which can to be efficiently utilized as energy source by pyrolysis technologies. However, due to the existence of the adhesives and ash inside, waste particleboards are relatively hard to be pyrolyzed and form certain amounts of nitrogenous compounds. In order to improve the pyrolysis reactivity and tune the pyrolytic products, wood is proposed to be blended with waste particleboards for the co-pyrolysis treatment. In this study, the pyrolysis characteristics and chemical composition of pyrolytic vapors of samples with different blending ratios were studied using the TGA and Py-GC-MS analyses. The results showed as increasing the weight percentage of poplar wood, the pyrolysis activation energy and char residue content of the blends were gradually reduced, which was almost a linear correlation. Nevertheless, the chemical composition and distribution of pyrolytic vapors products of the samples was varied nonlinearly with blending ratio, and poplar wood exhibited a significant influence on the production of pyrolytic compounds from waste particleboards. The yields of most pyrolysis products reached the highest when the ratio of poplar wood was 50%, which probably indicated the existence of a synergy effect during the co-pyrolysis of different types of feedstock. It is believed that the results of this study are beneficial to the pyrolysis conversion of waste wood-based materials.