Co-pyrolysis of phumdi and para grass biomass from Loktak Lake

[Display omitted] •Loktak lake, India has two most common vegetation, phumdi and para grass.•Pyrolysis of phumdi and para grass produced bio-oil rich in phenolic, ketones and furans.•Organic carbon upto 65 wt% in co-pyrolysis biochar makes it an efficient fuel for combustion.•Bio-oil yield (max) of 36.9, 46.7 and 37.8 wt% was obtained from phumdi, paragrass and mixture (1:1). In the present work, the pyrolysis of para grass (PG) and phumdi (PH) biomass samples was conducted in the temperature range of 300–500 °C to obtain the optimum temperature for obtaining the maximum yield of bio-oil. Further, co-pyrolysis experiments of PH and PG were also conducted at the same optimized temperature and varied compositions to investigate the synergistic effect. It was observed during the co-pyrolysis, that the maximum bio-oil yield of 37.80 wt% was obtained at the mass ratio of 1:1. The GC–MS, FT-IR and 1H NMR analysis revealed that the bio-oils produced from all the processes were rich in functionalities. Phenolic compounds such as 2-methoxy-4-vinyl phenol, phenol, 2-methoxy, phenol 4-ethyl constituted a significant portion of bio-oils. The biochars obtained at the optimum pyrolytic conditions were analyzed by FT-IR and TOC analyzer.