Abstract
Annually, the olive oil industry generates a significant amount of by-products, such as olive pomace, olive husks, tree prunings, leaves, pits, and branches. Therefore, the recovery of these residues has become a major challenge in Mediterranean countries. The utilization of olive industry residues has received much attention in recent years, especially for energy purposes. Accordingly, this primary experimental study aims at investigating the potential of olive biomass waste for energy recovery in terms of synthesis gas (or syngas) production using the thermal arc plasma gasification method. The olive charcoal made from the exhausted olive solid waste (olive pomace) was chosen as a reference material for primary experiments with known composition from the performed proximate and ultimate analysis. The experiments were carried out at various operational parameters: raw biomass and water vapour flow rates and the plasma generator power. The producer gas involved principally CO, H2, and CO2 with the highest concentrations of 41.17%, 13.06%, and 13.48%, respectively. The produced synthesis gas has a lower heating value of 6.09 MJ/nm3 at the H2O/C ratio of 3.15 and the plasma torch had a power of 52.2 kW.
Highlights
Significant quantities of raw biomasses are found in waste streams in the EuropeanUnion (EU)
The exhausted olive solid waste was used as a feedstock for charcoal production
Since the experiments were carried out at the various operational parameters, such as treated material flow rate, water vapour flow rate, and power of the plasma torch, there is a direct material flow rate, water vapour flow rate, and power of the plasma torch, there is a direct relation between the water vapour used as a plasma forming gas and the power of the plasma torch
Summary
Significant quantities of raw biomasses are found in waste streams in the EuropeanUnion (EU). Significant quantities of raw biomasses are found in waste streams in the European. In 2014, economic activities and households generated approximately 2.6 billion tonnes of wastes in the EU [1]. Recent developments show that additional improvement on resource efficiency is possible, which can lead to significant environmental, economic, and social benefits. The olive oil industry has been mainly concentrated in the Mediterranean region, where a very large amount of waste, such as olive pomace, olive husks, tree prunings, leaves, pits, and branches are being generated annually. Greece, Turkey, Tunisia, Portugal, Syria, and Morocco are the major olive oil producers worldwide [3]. The EU produced 69%, and exported 65%, of the world’s olive oil in the last five years [4]. The estimated quantities of wastes derived from the Energies 2017, 10, 710; doi:10.3390/en10050710 www.mdpi.com/journal/energies
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