The end of fossil fuels era is becoming day by day [1] however the request of raw materials and fuels from industry is growing every year [2]. As a consequence research for renewable resource to supply oil is became very attractive [3]. Biomasses are very promising sources to satisfy the growing request of energy and raw materials [4-6] and in the same time to reduce the environmental impact due to their production [7]. Cellulose is particular interesting among different available biomasses because it is not interfere with the availability of resource for alimentation [8]. It is the main component of woody biomasses (until 50%) [9], and it is the most abundant polysaccharide and it may be the source of chemicals through a pyrolysis process [10]. Pyrolysis of cellulose through a classic heating was reported in several papers [11, 12] together with kinetic of the process and the main decomposition mechanism [13, 14] where a high formation of levoglucosan is proposed [15]. Levoglucosan is an anhydrosugar employed for the production of unhydrolysable glucose polymers [16] or in the production of bioethanol [17]. Furthermore through pyrolysis of cellulose a great variety of very attractive furanosidic compounds like furfural and hydroxyfurfural [18] may be obtained. In recent year the classical thermal heating is flanked with a new systems based on the use of microwave (MW) heating [19] because microwave assisted pyrolysis (MAP) is an interesting way to perform pyrolysis in a very short time and with the possibility of an easy control of the energy employed in the process [20, 21]. MAP was used to process different waste polymeric materials [22-25] in different conditions [26] to produce chemicals and fuels. Microwave are not absorbed and converted into heat by every materials, so MAP was frequently performed in the presence of a MW absorber. MAP of biomass has proven to be a reliable tool to employ waste biomass as the raw material for the process [27, 28] in the presence or the absence of a MW absorber and its conversion into chemicals [29] with good yields of bio-oils was reported. However the use of a MW absorber affects the quality and quantity of bio-oils as reported by Undri et al. [30].
Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract
