The burning of tonnes of paddy straw in the open field by the farmers in Punjab
has resulted in air pollutant emissions causing serious environmental and health
consequences. The paper presents a study on the utilization of the surplus paddy
straw in Punjab for biochar production by pyrolysis. From the study, 7.60 MT of
paddy straw are available in Punjab as surplus. The pyrolysis study was set at
four different operating temperature conditions 300, 400, 500 and 600oC with
biochar conversion efficiency of 57.87, 42.90, 37.19 and 35.63 % respectively.
The corresponding energy yield potential obtained from converted biochar were
77.51, 60.46, 56.25 and 55.59 PJ respectively. The analysis of air pollutant
emission from burning of paddy straw was further quantified in terms of CO2,
CH4, N2O, TPM, NMHC CO, NOx, SO2 and PM 2.5 emissions and the net GHG
CO2 emission was recorded as 8264.64 Gg/year.