Prediction of NH and HCN yield from biomass fast pyrolysis: Machine learning modeling and evaluation.

Journal: The Science of the total environment
Published Date:

Abstract

Rapid pyrolysis is a promising technique to convert biomass into fuel oil, where NO emission remains a substantial environmental risk. NH and HCN are top precursors for NO emission. In order to clarify their migration path and provide appropriate strategies for their controlling, six up-to-date machine learning (ML) models were established to predict the NH and HCN yield during rapid pyrolysis of 26 biomass feedstocks. Cross-validation and grid search methods were used to determine the optimal hyperparameters for these ML models. The support vector regression (SVR) model achieved optimal accuracy among them. The optimal root means square error (%), mean absolute error (%), and R of test set for NH/HCN yield were 1.2901/1.1531, 1.0501/0.84712, and 0.98253/0.96152, respectively. In addition, based on the results of Pearson correlation analysis, the input variables with a weak linear correlation with the target product were eliminated, which was found capable of improving the prediction accuracy of almost all ML models except SVR. While after input variables elimination, the SVR model still showed the optimal NH and HCN yield prediction accuracy. It reflects SVR's great significance and potential for predicting the yield of NO precursors during rapid biomass pyrolysis.

Authors

  • Junyu Tao
    Guangxi Scientific Research Center of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine, Nanning, Guangxi, China.
  • Xiaoxiao Yin
    School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300350, China.
  • Xilei Yao
    School of Mechanical Engineering, Tianjin University of Commerce, Tianjin 300134, China.
  • Zhanjun Cheng
    School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300350, China; Tianjin Engineering Research Center for Organic Wastes Safe Disposal and Energy Utilization/Key Laboratory of Efficient Utilization of Low and Medium Energy of Ministry of Education/Tianjin Key Lab of Biomass/Wastes Utilization, Tianjin, 300072, China. Electronic address: zjcheng@tju.edu.cn.
  • Beibei Yan
    School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Tianjin University, Tianjin 300350, China; Tianjin Key Lab of Biomass Wastes Utilization/Tianjin Engineering Research Center of Bio Gas/Oil Technology, Tianjin 300072, China.
  • Guanyi Chen
    School of Mechanical Engineering, Tianjin University of Commerce, Tianjin 300134, China; School of Science, Tibet University, Lhasa 850012, China.