Pyrolysis, slow hardwoods

It is apparent that if one wishes to obtain pure chemicals by biomass pyrolysis, further processing to separate the reaction mixture is necessary. As will be shown later, this did not hinder commercial use of biomass pyrolysis for the manufacture of specific chemicals. The slow, destructive distillation of biomass was commercial technology for the production of several commodity chemicals long before fossil fuels became the preferred feedstocks. Hardwood pyrolysis once served as an important commercial source of methanol, acetic acid, ketones, and other chemicals. 

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