Resumen: This paper provides a review on pyrolysis technologies, focusing on reactor designs and companies commercializing this technology. The renewed interest on pyrolysis is driven by the potential to convert lignocellulosic materials into bio-oil and biochar and the use of these intermediates for the production bio-fuels, biochemicals and engineered biochars for environmental services. This review presents slow, intermediate, fast and microwave pyrolysis as complementary technologies that share some commonalities in their designs. While slow pyrolysis technologies (traditional carbonization kilns) use wood trunks to produce char chunks for cooking, fast pyrolysis systems process small particles to maximize bio-oil yield. The realization of the environmental issues associated with the use of carbonization technologies and the technical difficulties to operate fast pyrolysis reactors using sand as heating media and large volumes of carrier gas, as well as the problems to refine resulting highly oxygenated oils, are forcing the thermochemical conversion community to rethink the design and use of these reactors. Intermediate pyrolysis reactors (also known as converters) offer opportunities for the large scale balanced production of char and biooil. The capacity of these reactors to process forest and agricultural wastes without much preprocessing is a clear advantage. Microwave pyrolysis is an option for modular small autonomous devises for solid waste management. Herein, the evolution of the pyrolysis technology is presented from a historical perspective; thus, old and new innovative designs are discussed together. Idioma: Inglés DOI: 10.1021/acs.energyfuels.7b00641 Año: 2017 Publicado en: Energy and Fuels 31, 6 (2017), 5751-5775 ISSN: 0887-0624 Factor impacto JCR: 3.024 (2017) Categ. JCR: ENGINEERING, CHEMICAL rank: 36 / 137 = 0.263 (2017) - Q2 - T1 Categ. JCR: ENERGY & FUELS rank: 40 / 97 = 0.412 (2017) - Q2 - T2 Factor impacto SCIMAGO: 1.159 - Chemical Engineering (miscellaneous) (Q1) - Fuel Technology (Q1) - Energy Engineering and Power Technology (Q1)