Investigation of sawdust and glycerol blend biofuel briquette production and usage

Abstract

Production and usage of sawdust fuel briquettes blend with glycerol additives were investigated. The environmental influence of wood fuel usage for heating is much less than the usage of fossil firing. While burning wood, it emits less CO2, NOx, sulphur compounds and other harmful gas emissions in comparison with burning of other oil products or carbon. While increasing the production of biodiesel in Lithuania, the glycerol usage problem becomes relevant. The market in the EU is full it, and to build a glycerol reprocessing factory would be no available. Consequently we used the mix of glycerol with sawdust and produced briquettes from this mix. It was experimentally determined, that the calorific value of the briquettes was 19.8 MJ·kg-1, and the efficiency of production and pressing equipment while using glycerol was increased. The working time between renovations was extended to 10-15 %, that could be explained by good lubrication features of glycerol. The research results of harmful gas emission measurement showed that while burning the sawdust briquettes with 5-10 % glycerol additives CO2 emission increased to 40-50 %. However, it is bio-based gas, which takes part in the natural circuit of rape existence. The increase of NOx emission could be named as negative influence.