Making blends of agarwood waste with empty palm bunches or rubber wood sawdust for pelletized biofuels

Abstract

This study created biomass-pellet fuel with reduced ash content from agarwood waste mixed with empty palm bunches (ACW+EPB), and from agarwood waste with rubber wood sawdust (ACW+RWS), utilizing the low ash value of the agarwood waste. The tested blends had a 1:1 ratio of agarwood waste and empty palm bunches, and a 1:3 ratio of agarwood waste and rubber wood sawdust. Comparisons were also conducted relative to Korean (Grade 4) (2014) and ENplus B (2014) commercial pellet standards. Before pressure molding, the mixture components were dried and ground in a pelletizing device with a motor power of 7.5 kW (380 V, 50 Hz), yielding 100 to 150 kg/h without added adhesive. The test results showed that ACW ash content decreased in the RWS hybrid, yet increased in the EPB mixture. The attributes of ash content, moisture content, and heating value of ACW+RWS satisfied ENplus B (2014) and Korean (Grade 4) (2014) standards at 1.70%, 4.50%, and 4,536 kcal/kg. The ACW+EPB also satisfied the Korean (Grade 4) standard at 4.20%, 6.50%, and 4,220 kcal/kg. Thus, the biomass pellets from the mixture of agarwood waste and rubber wood sawdust and that of agarwood waste and empty palm bunches were of suitable quality for commercial purposes.

Properties and cost of natural rubber latex foam using biomass ash filler from agarwood pellets

“…Agarwood Pellet Biomass Ash (APBA) is the residue from burning agarwood pellets, a form of biomass fuel. Limhengha et al (2021) disclose that after the burning, about 3% of ash remains. Such residues from generating of industrial energy become environmental problems in need of elimination, not to mention being a major problem to pellet biomass fuel users, which is an unresolved issue to this day.…”

“…The natural fillers used in latex foam include ash materials (Rattanaplome 2012), oil bran (Moonchai and Aimrat 2013), rice husk powder (Ramasamy et al 2013), egg shells (Bashir et al 2017), kenaf (Karim et al 2018), kenaf peel (Kudori et al 2019), sugarcane straw (Tomyangkul et al 2016), oil palm fiber (Lim et al 2018), and agarwood-waste . Researchers are additionally interested in using agarwood pellets, that are waste from a distillation process (Limhengha et al 2021), as well as agarwood waste from the distillation (Yangthong et al 2021;Faibunchan et al 2022;Nun-anan et al 2021) as fillers in natural rubber latex.…”

“…Based on the above review of prior work, NRLF in this study was modified by incorporating Agarwood Pellet Biomass Ash (APBA) as a filler. Differing from a previous study (Limhengha et al 2021), this work focused on utilizing ash generated from agarwood pellet biomass fuel. It was expected that filling APBA would improve its physical properties, and the tentative filler could potentially replace synthetic fillers.…”

Elemental Compositions of Wood Plastic Pellets Made from Sawdust and Refuse-Derived Fuel (RDF) Waste

“…Similarly, Carroll and Finnan [6] found that willow, miscanthus, wheat, barley, and rape straws were also used. Additionally, Limhengha et al [7] showed the potential of empty fruit bunches as a biomass source for pellet production.…”

Sustainable Growth through Garden Waste Pelletization

“…Palm tree waste is commonly utilized as a building material (17) and adsorbent (18) , but it also has the potential to generate bioenergy (19) . Empty palm bunches along with rubber and agro waste were used to produce the pellets previously (20) . https://www.indjst.org/ Similarly, Ashoka and jackfruit tree leaves have lignocellulosic properties which can be used to generate biofuel.…”