Exploitation of Wood Waste of Pinus spp for Briquette Production: A Case Study in the Community of San Francisco Pichátaro, Michoacán, Mexico

Abstract

This study describes the exploitation of wood waste (Pinus spp.) in the form of sawdust and shavings generated during the production of furniture and artisanal items in a community in the state of Michoacán, western Mexico. A process is described to densifying this raw material, to produce solid-type biofuel briquettes that can be used to satisfy the need to generate low-power heat for residential sectors. Briquette production involved six stages: (a) gathering samples of sawdust and shavings from artisanal workshops in the community; (b) proximal characterization of the samples; (c) elaborating the briquettes; (d) physicochemical characterization of the briquettes; (e) evaluation of the physical-thermal combustion of the briquettes; and (f) an economic evaluation of briquette production to determine viability. Finally, we performed a comparative analysis of the energy, economic, and environmental indicators of the briquettes produced and conventional pine and oak firewood (Pinus spp., Quercus spp.) in the study community. The results show the viability of using biomass residues to make briquettes, which are efficient, economic and easy to make and use.

Empirical Studies on Biomass Briquette Production: A Literature Review

“…and Eucalyptus grandis) [26] and pine (Pinus spp.) [27] were used. Corn husks, cobs and straw were mixed with other biomass, such as cassava husk [28] and oil palm husk [29].…”

“…These processes normally aim to serve the solid biofuels market, requiring effective production and the best cost-benefit ratio. Briquettes can also be produced manually, using hydraulic presses, or using manual mechanical devices (Figure 1) [27,49,50]. Manual briquetters are generally simpler to operate.…”

“…Several binders, such as molasses, corn and cassava starch, crude glycerol and paper pulp have been used in previous studies as solid fuel binders [27][28][29]38,44]. Some of these studies can be found in Table 5, where various levels of binders have been incorporated into the briquettes.…”

“…The table highlights the fractions of binder that were responsible for improving some of the briquettes' output properties, such as compressive strength and calorific value. The binder used most often among the works studied was starch, which is often mixed with heated water to produce a paste with a gelatinous consistency [27,45]. The research by Khlifi et al [8] used corn starch and analyzed the briquettes produced with 0, 10, 15 and 30% of the binder.…”

Valorization of briquettes fuel using Pinus spp. sawdust from five regions of Mexico

“…Various investigations have evaluated the properties of briquettes made with different biomass residues: wheat straw and sawdust (Wamukonya and Jenkins 1995), woody materials (Li and Liu 2000), maize cob and coal (Wilaipon 2008), tree and shrub species (Kumar et al 2011), wood residues (Paula et al 2011), mixtures of different materials (mango leaves, acacia leaves, sawdust) and as an adhesive cow dung (Birwatkar et al 2014), wood residues mainly from sawdust (Sánchez et al 2014), tropical hardwood timber species (Mitchual et al 2014), pine sawdust, recycled activated carbon and cassava starch (Ordoñez 2015), sawdust, bark, and wood-bark from Pinus montezumae, P. leiophylla, and P. pseudostrobus (Pérez-Pérez et al 2016), different lignocellulosic biomass (Souza and Vale 2016), and fresh sawdust and weathered sawdust from Pinus pseudostrobus (Carrillo-Parra et al 2018). Recently, briquettes have been made with sawdust and pine shavings using starch as an additive (Morales-Máximo et al 2020). Brunerova et al (2020 used larch sawdust, spruce shaving, and spent coffee grounds, in different proportions to make briquettes.…”