Productivity Improvement in Srew Type Biomass Briquetting

In the current era, fossil fuel is a necessity in our everyday life, for not only it is used as an energy source, but also due to the high rate of dependability on the fuel itself. The recent drop in oil prices caused an enormous impact on the world economy, especially to the countries that are highly dependent on the fuel industry. The United States also are affected by this situation. One suggestion and a major change, in order to reduce the high dependency on the fossil fuel and to overcome the problems related to the usage of fossil fuel, is to start the wide use of biofuel as the fossil fuel replacement. The impact of this change, and also a huge improvement, not only will help to stabilize the economy, but also can help in reducing the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

However, despite its many advantages biomass still has many disadvantages. Firstly it is not as efficient as fossil fuels, for example the ethanol produced for cars via biomass is not even close to the efficiency of petrol and does damage to engines over time. It also has the potential to harm the environment through increase of methane gases which are produced as a bi-product if animal and human waste is used. Biomass also requires a large distance away from residential areas in order to burn it and a large amount of fuel in comparison to other energy sources which can have dramatic effects if large portions of forests are cut down to provide lumber.1

Bioenergy is a renewable energy which is obtained by combusting the biomass. It is also called ‘biomass energy’. Biomass is one of alternative sources, which consists of different materials such as trees, construction wood, sewage sludge, manure, and farm waste including cornhusks, peanut shells, leaves and so on (Ischenko et al, 2007). Ischenko et al (2007) claim that biomass releases less carbon dioxide than fossil fuel. In the other words, it helps to slow down the pace of global warming. Another advantage of it is turning the great amount of waste such as potato peels, used cooking oil, pig intestines into useful energy. So it can reduce the costs of

To solve the rigorous threat to earth from global warming, bio-fuels serve as the most feasible source of energy all over the world. The environmental and economical performance of bio-fuel as compared to fossil fuel was analyzed by full Life Cycle Analyses (LCA) in Spain. The Spanish government CIEMAT, carried out two LCA’s so as to compare ethanol-ethanol mixtures with gasoline, and biodiesel-biodiesel mixtures with fuel oil according to ISO 14040-43 standards, these standards evaluate energy and mass balance for two or more objects. It was concluded that carbon dioxide emission during utilization of bio-fuel are lower than fossil fuel and bio-fuel requires less primary energy to be processed than fossil fuels. Bob Dinneen, President and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association submitted the letter to the editor of The Gazette in which he marked that “On an environmental level, conventional ethanol is reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 34% compared to petroleum, including hypothetical land use change emissions” (qtd. in renewable fuel association). As the raw material for

The project’s hypothesis is: if the type of biomass is vegetable peels then the amount of biogas produced will increase. This project tests the amount of biogas produced when cow manure is combined with different types of biomass (in this case, mashed bananas and vegetable peelings). It is an interesting project because studying how biogas is produced, it is possible to see how this chemical reaction happens. Biogas can be used for cooking, heating, and after going through a transformation process it could be even used as fuel. If studied more, biogas could have more functions.

Both biodiesel and ethanol are derivatives of biomass that have been processed to create a liquid biofuel. Both types of biofuels have been touted as secure and environmentally safe alternatives to fossil fuels, however the research verifying these claims is extensive but often contradicting. In the following paper, the efficiency and quality of the two types of biofuel will be discussed. The effects of variables such as source materials and production techniques on efficiency and quality will be considered. Due to the limited scope of this paper however, only generalized net analyses of ethanol and biodiesel production will be considered. The production of ethanol requires one of two source materials, cellulose

The fossil fuel coal is a burnable bituminous black rock that is consisting mainly of carbonized plant matter which is mainly found underground in seams and is also used as a fuel. In time, material that had been plants became coal. The main use for coal today is for generating electricity from one stop to another, cement manufacturing, steel products and as well as a liquid fuel. Coal is formed by plant decay which then turns into peat, the peat will than change to lignite which is a soft brown coal then after that a bituminous coal is formed which is black and brittle but also very polluting, after which an anthracite coal is formed, the anthracite coal contains the highest amount of carbon making it the cleanest and safest to burn. There are two ways coal can be

Wood is a complex material with numerous chemical components. It is made up chiefly of the biopolymers cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin. The decomposition of these polymers at high temperatures involves a system of possibly hundreds of interrelated reactions with a wide variety of products. The array of products is generally simplified by broadly categorizing them by phase behavior as gas, tar, or char. The gases produced are not condensable at ambient conditions and are often comprised of carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, and light hydrocarbons1. Tar makes up the fraction of organic products that are expelled as vapor during pyrolysis but are able to be condensed into a liquid. The tar fraction excludes water, as water is assumed to have been dried from the material before the onset of pyrolysis. Finally, the char is a carbon rich solid phase left behind after pyrolysis.

To date, when issues related with environment, GHG(Green House Gas), sustainability are gradually concerned, increasing people are pursuing new ways to lower down the negative effect exerted by modern industry. This also attract government’s attention upon encouraging utilization and production of alternative energy and offering financial aid for some newly high-tech companies. One solution to deal with this global concerns is finding or develop alternate fuels to replace the fossil fuels such as biofuels. The utilization of biofuels as energy for transportation is mainly driven by the over-depletion of oil, the concerns about energy consumption and the emission of Green House gas. However due to some barriers, the most recently used biofuels will replace around 10 to 15% of fossil fuels in the field of transportation[2]. [Is it MLA citation style?

One of the more impressive developments in clean coal technology has been the fluidized bed technology (Berg & Hagar, 2007). This technology has been in development since the 1980s and represents a great leap forward in the clean burning of coal. This technology allows the burning of coal with high sulfur content with little to no pollution (Berg & Hagar, 2007). The country Turkey has been developing the technology to work with their low quality coal resources as well as different biomasses including olive cake (Eskin & Hepbasil, 2006). The use of this technology permits greater generation of electricity with the lower quality fuels that are available in Turkey (Eskin & Hepbasil, 2006). The emissions are greatly reduced by the introduction of limestone into the fuel prior to the combustion chamber (Berg & Hagar, 2007). This neutralizes the majority of the acidic compounds produced during combustion. This technology also creates more heat with less fuel allowing for less

After the industrial revolution, energy is urgently needed for both daily life and industries. For hundreds of years, human beings have relied on the consumption of energy. People not only cannot live without them but also have to increase the amount for their better living methods and better life quality. Problems come along with increasing energy, especially when the major part of the energy comes from burning coal. Pollution caused by excess burning of coal and trade problems caused by coal prices and coal reserves are so apparent that need to be addressed. However, the advantages of burning coal for energies are so clear for its cheaper

In the world of global warming, all kinds of pollution and fuel shortages going on, renewable and clean/ green energy is increasingly the ideal solution of energy related problems we have to solve one way or another. Biofuel is one of the mainstream and highly supported solutions nowadays, an idea to make renewable fuel by living organisms such as fiber, corn, vegetable oil or sugar cane. Unlike nonrenewable fossil fuels over extracted by people causing various environmental problems like generating a considerable amount greenhouse gas, current technology already lets renewable fuel like biofuels to shrink a certain amount of greenhouse gas production, making it a more ‘clean’ source of energy.

The paper describes the sustainable biochar concept with the aid of the following diagram. The paper discusses the dependence of the climate-change mitigation potential of biochar and bioenergy on the fertility of the soil being amended, the carbon intensity of the fuel being offset, and the feedstock used for deriving them (type of biomass). Locations with high soil fertility and where coal is the fuel being offset is more suitable for bioenergy production. For all other situations, biochar has a higher climate-change mitigation potential than bioenergy (Woolf, Amonette, Alayne Street-Perrott, et al.).

If the excess biomass materials are compacted to briquettes near their source they can be transported to longer distances, stored for more duration unaffected much by humidity [9] and put into versatile uses. There are many methods of densification available and screw briquetting is one good choice for producing high quality briquettes, a sample of which is shown in fig 2. These types of briquettes have uniform dimensions, high calorific value, less moisture are desirable feed stock for gasification systems, process heating and power generation applications. But the screw briquetting technology is having its own shortcomings like, the life of its parts like screw and mould are very short due to high wear rate, need of skilled labors to run the machine and wastage of energy for heating the raw material and the mould. The heating process is needed to eliminate moisture and volatile matters and to melt the lignin content in the raw material which acts like a binder. The quality of briquettes produced justifies the use of skilled labor. Due to high wear rate of screw and mould particularly the screw which have very short life about 4 to 15 hrs [10] there are regular stoppages of production, reconstruction of tools and wastage of output.Research works are going on all over the world in designing compact briquetting machines,

Biochar produced from pyrolysis process is known as a chemically and biologically stable form of carbon because microbes find it very difficult to break down and remain stable in soil for hundreds or thousands years. The carbon contained in the biochar is not degrading to carbon dioxide (CO2) to the same extent as untreated organic materials. Hence, biochar can be a very low cost soil amendment with low carbon sequestration capacity. It can affect in improving the quality of soil, prevent soil erosion, increases water retention, reduces fertilizer leaching and soil acidity and increases the plant yield of vegetation grown in biochar amended soil.