Analysis on hot briquetting mechanism of biomass fuel pellets

Abstract

Under the carbon peaking and carbon neutrality strategy, biomass has attracted much attention due to its characteristics of regeneration, low pollution and zero carbon emissions. The imperfects of biomass, such as the loose structure and low energy density, can be effectively solved by briquetting, and the resulted fuel pellets can be used as a substitute for fossil fuels, which is of great significance for the construction of new energy system. In the paper, the influencing factors of the hot briquetting process of biomass were summarized, and the evolution behavior and binding mechanism of biomass particles during the hot briquetting process were analyzed and discussed. Biomass briquetting process mainly includes cold briquetting and hot briquetting. Compared with cold briquetting process of biomass, hot briquetting with lower energy consumption can produce the biomass fuel pellets with higher quality. The moisture content (4%−15%) of the raw biomass has greater influence, the briquetting temperature (70−150 ℃) has relatively smaller effect on the density of the fuel pellets, and the briquetting pressure (60−130 MPa) and the particle size ( < 2.5 mm) of the raw material show the different impact on the density of the fuel pellets from different biomass. During the hot process, cellulose mainly plays the role of supporting skeleton, hemicellulose and lignin play the role of binder. In the microcosmic process of hot briquetting process, the inertia movement and subsequent viscoelastic-plastic deformation of the biomass particles occur and the mechanical interlock is formed between the particles. The brittle particles are broken and the natural viscous components are released, and thus, the bridge linkage between the particles is formed under the integrated effects of moisture, temperature and pressure. Mechanical interlocking and bridging reduce the distance between biomass molecules and promote the generation of intermolecular forces. Based on the above-mentioned mechanism of the hot briquetting of biomass, the quality of the resulted fuel pellets can be improved by biomass component adjustment, biomass blending or hydrothermal pretreatment. In the future, the molecular dynamics simulation method will be used to investigate the biomass briquetting process to obtain the molecular bonding mechanism of biomass components, which is conducive to further exploring the hot briquetting mechanism of biomass, and provide important guiding significance for the preparation of fuel pellets and molding materials from biomass.

Keywords

• biomass
• briquetting
• intermolecular forces
• mechanical interlocking
• bridging