Investigation of the combustion characteristics of briquettes prepared from olive mill solid waste blended with and without a natural binder in a fixed bed reactor

Abstract

This paper aims at studying the combustion in a homemade combustion chamber of biofuel briquettes prepared from olive mill solid wastes. Two different samples of briquettes compressed under 150 MPa and 35 °C were investigated: with binder (BOMSW) by adding corn starch and without binder (OMSW). Three combustion regimes were considered: 18, 36, and 55 m3/h, respectively. Seven K-thermocouples were used for temperature measurements. Moreover, the gaseous emission analysis was undertaken. Results show that the flame front propagation velocity reaches maximum values of 11 mm s−1 and 8.54 mm s−1 for OMSW and BOMSW, respectively. We find that the NOx content was higher in the case of the OMSW. On the contrary, the percentages of methane, carbon monoxide, and sulfur dioxide were more significant with the BOMSW. The combustion efficiency was evaluated and gives a higher value with BOMSW. We concluded that the used binder affects seriously the combustion efficiency and the gaseous emissions.