The Effect of Biomass Pellet Length, Test Conditions and Torrefaction on Mechanical Durability Characteristics According to ISO Standard 17831-1

Hamid Gilvari, Wiebren De Jong and Dingena L. Schott
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Hamid Gilvari: Department of Maritime and Transport Technology, Section of Transport Engineering and Logistics, Faculty of Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands
Wiebren De Jong: Department of Process and Energy, Section of Large Scale Energy Storage, Faculty of Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CB Delft, The Netherlands
Dingena L. Schott: Department of Maritime and Transport Technology, Section of Transport Engineering and Logistics, Faculty of Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering, Delft University of Technology, 2628 CD Delft, The Netherlands

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 11, 1-16

Abstract: With the recent increase in biomass pellet consumption, the mechanical degradation of pellets during transport and handling has become more important. ISO standard 17831-1 is an accepted global standard that is commonly used amongst researchers and industries to determine the mechanical durability of pellets. However, the measured mechanical durability sometimes fails to match the certificate accompanying the shipment. In such cases, pellet length specifications are suspected to play a role. This paper studies the effect of pellet length on mechanical durability for various types of commercially produced biomass pellets. In addition, the effect of test conditions and torrefaction on the mechanical durability of biomass pellets has been investigated. To study the effect of pellet length, pellets were classified into three groups: shorter than 15 mm, 15 to 30 mm, and longer than 30 mm, and their length distributions were measured using an in-house image processing tool. Then, the mechanical durability of pellets was measured using ISO standard 17831-1. The mechanical durability results were compared to random-sized pellet samples. To study the effect of test conditions, the mechanical durability test was operated at different time intervals to elucidate the effect of tumbling at different conditions. The results show that the mechanical durability depends highly on the length distribution of the pellets, with a difference between categories of up to 13%. It was also observed that the mechanical durability remains relatively constant after a specific time interval. Based on the results, we highly recommend modifying the current ISO standard to account for the pellet length distribution (PLD).

Keywords: biomass pellet; mechanical durability; ISO standard 17831-1; pellet length distribution; image processing (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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