Effects of bio-additives on the physicochemical properties and mechanical behavior of canola hull fuel pellets

Ramin Azargohar, Sonil Nanda, Kang Kang, Toby Bond, Chithra Karunakaran, Ajay K. Dalai and Janusz A. Kozinski

Renewable Energy, 2019, vol. 132, issue C, 296-307

Abstract: Agricultural residues can be converted to value-added products such as fuel pellets. Bio-based additives, including alkali lignin, glycerol and l-proline were used for binding formulation of canola hull fuel pellets. The binding formulation was optimized to produce pellet with the mechanical durability (by drop test) of 99%, relaxed density of 1,110 kg/m3, and energy density of 18,603 MJ/m3. l-proline showed the best performance in the enhancement of mechanical properties of pellet when compared with other two amino acids. Comparing with pure glycerol, use of crude glycerol decreased compression energy required for pelletization, but resultant pellet had lower tensile strength. SEM and light microscopy showed the effects of lacking moisture, lignin and l-proline in the formulation. Synchrotron-based computed tomography was used for 3D imaging of fuel pellets yielding estimated porosity values over a range of 1.3–5.7% for different fuel pellets. The effects of pelletization operating conditions were also investigated on the pellets.

Keywords: Canola hull; Pelletization; Characterization; Fuel pellet; Mechanical strength; Hydrophobicity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148118309534
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:132:y:2019:i:c:p:296-307

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2018.08.003

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().