Methodology for Identification and Classification of Biomass Pyrolysis Behavior 2009-01-2384

Pyrolysis is a very versatile waste processing technology which can be tailored to produce a variety of solid, liquid and/or gaseous products. The pyrolysis processing of pure and mixed solid waste streams has been under investigation for several decades for terrestrial use and a few commercial units have been built for niche applications. The use of pyrolysis as a key step in solid waste processing in space has been under consideration by NASA for several years. A large component of the solid waste is from biomass sources (e.g., paper, food waste, human waste). A methodology has been developed to characterize a large number of biomass materials using a standard pyrolysis experiment in combination with a neural network model in order to classify the data. Such a methodology can be helpful in the design and operation of pyrolysis reactors for spacecraft applications.