The rise in pellet consumption has resulted in a wider variety of materials for pellet manufacture. Thus, pellet industry has started looking for alternative products, such as wastes from agricultural activities, forestry and related industries, along with the combination thereof, obtaining a broad range of these products. In addition, the entry into force of EN ISO 17225 standard makes wood pellet market (among other types) possible for industry and household purposes. Therefore, wastes that are suitable for biomass use have recently increased. In this study, the main characteristics of ten kinds of laboratory-made pellets from different raw materials were analyzed. Thus, we have focused on the most limiting factors of quality standards that determine the suitability for biomass market, depending on the kind of pellet. The results showed considerable differences among the analyzed pellets, exceeding the limits established by the standard in almost all cases, especially concerning ash content and N and S composition. The requirements of the studied standard, very demanding for certain factors, disable the entry of these densified wastes in greater added value markets.

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Brewing industry generates a main residue, brewers’ spent grain (BSG), which has good properties both for use in animal consumption and for thermal use, but contains a very high content of moisture (20–25% dry matter content), so that its elimination or treatment should be immediate, since it can cause degeneration problems of the product. Currently, brewers often supply this material at low cost for use as livestock feed. This solution is not efficiently carried out without reporting too much benefit to the brewers more than to eliminate waste from their facilities. However, BSG is a raw material of interest for application in different areas due to its low price, availability throughout the year and a valuable chemical composition, so it seems necessary to look for an alternative use to give value to these characteristics. In this paper a drying study is carried out in order to establish the foundations for its energy use by thermal of BSG. BSG has been used from a craft brewery located at Badajoz, Spain. Drying analysis was carried out for various temperatures and inlet air flow by means a convective dryer. The properties studied show that BSG can be used for thermal utilization in large installations, being necessary heat drying processes as a pretreatment in order to obtain a biofuel with acceptable efficiency.

Industry sector has an important impact on primary energy consumption at the international level, and solar energy constitutes a real alternative to cover these energy needs partially. Among thermosolar concentration technologies, Linear Fresnel Collector (LFC) technology has some advantages that make it more accessible to industries. With the aim of providing new tools for easier decision-making processes, in the present work, several energy audits were carried out in industries (located in the south-west of Europe, with considerable steam consumptions), quantifying thermal and energy consumptions and defining both work schedules and seasonality. Afterwards, a comparison based on three factors was carried out: Thermal consumption regarding total industry consumption, the performance of the work during the solar schedule, and the quantification of the monthly average concentrated energy for a certain LFC facility. The analysis carried out according to these criteria showed different results for each case, making a global assessment necessary to suitably ponder each factor. This analysis ranked tomato industries as the most suitable for LFC technology, due to the fact that their main operating period was during the months with the highest solar isolation, and the solar schedule was completely integrated in a 24-h working day. Also, industrial waxes and laundries showed a good combination of both facts.Energies 2019, 12, 4049 2 of 15 26% of primary energy consumption [16]. Furthermore, heat generation processes in industry constitute 54% of the total energy consumption in Europe in contrast with 17% of the total energy consumption corresponding to electric uses. This proportion of energy use justifies the implementation of solar thermal-based systems [17].Solar thermal systems harness solar energy for heating, either as hot water for domestic use-domestic hot water and heating-as a heating source for fluids in industrial processes or as steam to produce mechanical energy in a turbine to obtain electrical energy. Solar thermal systems may have concentrators to direct solar isolation that strikes the capturing surface area towards a smaller area (absorber area). This configuration obtains higher temperatures in the heat transfer fluid. These devices achieve solar concentration using specular reflection; thus, only direct isolation is used.There are two different technologies that concentrate direct solar isolation: Point focus type, that concentrates isolation into a single point-solar power tower or Dish-Stirling system-and linear focus type, which concentrates isolation into a linear receptor. Linear focus type reaches higher temperatures, because it concentrates isolation into a larger area. There are two types of linear focus collectors: Parabolic trough collector (PTC) and linear Fresnel collectors [18,19].Several studies have shown LFC (Linear Fresnel Collector) optical quality and thermal efficiency is slightly lower than in the case of PTC, due to the high influence of the angle of incidence and the cosine fa...

Waste production is increasing every day as a consequence of human activities; thus, its valorization is becoming more important. For this purpose, the usage of wastes as biofuels is one of the most important aspects of sustainable strategies. This is the case of the main waste generated in brewing industries: brewers’ spent grain (BSG). In this sector, microbreweries are not able to properly manage the wastes that they generate due to lack of space. Consequently, the transformation of BSG to a high-quality biofuel might be an interesting option for this kind of small industry. In this work, we carried out a physical-energy characterization of BSG, as well as pellets from this waste. The initial characterization showed slightly unfavorable results concerning N and ash, with values of 3.76% and 3.37% db, respectively. Nevertheless, the physical characterization of the pellets was very good, with acceptable bulk density (662.96 kg·m−3 wb) and low heating value (LHV; 17.65 MJ·kg−1 wb), among others. This situation is very favorable for any of the intended uses (for energy use or animal feed, among others).

Biomass plays an important role as an energy source, being an interesting alternative to fossil fuels due to its environment-friendly and sustainable characteristics. However, due to the exposure of customers to emissions during biomass heating, evolved pollutants should be taken into account and controlled. Changing raw materials or mixing them with another less pollutant biomass could be a suitable step to reduce pollution. This work studied the thermal behaviour of olive pomace, pyrenean oak and their blends under combustion using thermogravimetric analysis. It was possible to monitor the emissions released during the process by coupling mass spectrometry analysis. The experiments were carried out under non-isothermal conditions at the temperature range 25–750 °C and a heating rate of 20 °C·min−1. The following species were analysed: aromatic compounds (benzene and toluene), sulphur emissions (sulphur dioxide), 1,4-dioxin, hydrochloric acid, carbon dioxide and nitrogen oxides. The results indicated that pollutants were mainly evolved in two different stages, which are related to the thermal degradation steps. Thus, depending on the pollutant and raw material composition, different emission profiles were observed. Furthermore, intensity of the emission profiles was related, in some cases, to the composition of the precursor.