Biomass pellets produced from filler cake as waste to energy in sugar industry

Abstract

In the sugarcane and sugar industry, there is a waste produced from the manufacturing process called “Filter cake”. It is a black solid sludge with the moisture content of 70-75%. In general, this waste is about 4% of the sugarcane mass input to the process. In every year, there are a large amount of filter cake resulting in high waste management costs. Therefore, the idea of conversion this waste to energy was proposed. The filter cake was dried off to the moisture contents of 40%, 45%, 50%, 55% and 60% and then fed into a pelletizer for the 5 different initial moistures. Then filter cake pellets were dried off by sun drying for 3 days. Dried pellets from different initial moistures were analyzed for physical properties. It was found that the pellet with initial moisture content of 40% has the best physical properties at the diameter of 4.0 mm and 68.4% of pellets felt into 30-40 mm of length. In addition, it has the highest bulk density, highest durability and lowest dust content of 222.03 kg/m3, 96.13% and 0.54% respectively. The proximate analysis and heating value were also determined for the dried pellets. The results showed that dried pellets contained 5.33% moisture, 35.67% ash, 51.33% volatile matter, 7.67% fixed carbon and the heating value of 11.71 MJ/kg. These properties were compared to other pellets and standard and it was suggested that the filter cake pellets can be used together with bagasse as fuel for a boiler in a sugarcane industry.