2.2. Fluidized bed reactor
The fast pyrolysis of the palm kernel cake was conducted in a fluidized bed reactor, as schematically described in Fig. 1. The pyrolysis reactor, cyclone, and two condensers used in this research were made of Pyrex glass. The reactor had a diameter of 3.6 cm with a height of 20 cm. In order to avoid the product condensing on the wall of the cyclone and pipeline, the whole apparatus was carefully covered by a heat-insulating material. For the purpose of applying various biomass particle sizes for the fast pyrolysis and maintaining the fluidized condition more stably another exit from the reactor, in addition to the usual product exit from the reactor to the cyclone (way 1), to a solid collecting bottle (way 2) was also designed. The presence of way 2 was helpful for drawing the char out of the reactor when a large particle size and small flow rate of fluidizing gas (at which the entrainment of solid product does not occur) were used and successfully resulted in balancing the input and output materials during the process.