Pyrolysis

One of the up and coming fields in thermodynamic decomposition of organic materials can be applied on a wide variety of organic material and is heavily being used in the chemical industry as it produced charcoal, activated carbon, methanol and other chemicals as well as converting ethylene dichloride into vinyl chloride to make PVC and to produce coke from coal

CaHbOc + heat → H2O + CO2 + H2 + CO + CH4 + C2H6 + CH2O + tar + char

Adrian Hewitt, the principal environment officer of Merton says that pyrolysis was a better solution than burning biomass, and added that connecting to the plant was a condition of planning consent

Marshall, A. T. and Morris, J. M. says that pyrolysis also has a possibility of being integrated with other processes such as those found in mechanical biological treatment and anaerobic digestion

The advantages of pyrolysis is that as it is combustion without the presence of oxygen, it reduces greenhouse gas emissions and waste going to landfills and produces marketable products that have a good and growing market. It also has low risk of water pollution and odour with a higher recovery rate of resources. Also, its production has only minimal risk on health.

References

http://www.emrc.org.au/pyrolysis.html

http://www.bioenergywiki.net/Pyrolysis

Marshall, A. T. & Morris, J. M. (2006) A Watery Solution and Sustainable Energy Parks, CIWM Journal, pp. 22–23

"BTG Biomass Technology Group b.v. :: Technology:: Pyrolysis". Archived from the original on 2007-07-03.