Abstract
The objective of the reported project was to produce wood agglomerates from popular East European species to determine their strength and combustion properties. Closed-die pellets were produced from sawdust of six types of wood common on the East European market: pine, willow, oak, poplar, birch, and beech. The properties of pellets, determined by the type of wood, were influenced by the compaction pressure and the moisture content of the sawdust. The highest average pellet density was obtained for oak sawdust, while the lowest density was obtained for poplar pellets. Expansion of pellets after removing from the die was found to be dependent on the wood species, and as expected, on compaction pressure. The pellet expansion increased after 2 h of conditioning in the laboratory and with an increase in moisture content. The highest and the smallest strength were obtained for oak pellets and for birch sawdust, respectively. The strength of the pellets increased by more than 100% with an increase in the compaction pressure from 60 MPa to 120 MPa. The average strength decreased by 65% with increasing moisture content. For all tested materials, drop resistance remained at a high level, acceptable in industrial practice. The highest calorific value of 18.97 MJ/kg was obtained for pine pellets. The highest ash value of 1.52% was obtained for willow pellets and the lowest value of 0.32% for pine pellets.
Highlights
The contribution of green energy to the total energy balance is constantly increasing.For this purpose, energy plants are increasingly being powered by agricultural, forestry, and plant products
The sawdust was obtained using the same cutting tool for different types of wood, the sieve analysis showed that the contents of the individual fractions were different
The results presented in this study are comparable to those obtained by Li and Liu [8] for compacting pine and oak sawdust under compaction pressures ranging from 34 to 138 MPa
Summary
The contribution of green energy to the total energy balance is constantly increasing. For this purpose, energy plants are increasingly being powered by agricultural, forestry, and plant products. A typical preliminary treatment of any waste biomass from the wood and agriculture industry comprises a densification of this biomass to create a homogeneous compacted material, making it convenient for dosing and transport [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. The material is compacted into briquettes and pellets. Wood pellets have become the main source of co-firing in European power plants [3]. Pelletization allows better material feeding, with less dust formation [5]
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