Biomass Torrefaction and Co-firing, Processes Modeling

I. INTRODUCTION

Poland is in the group of fife countries in European Union with the biggest biomass resources (68
thousands m3) which can potentially use for energy production. This biomass is coming mainly
from forests and wood waste. Ligninocellulose biomass is a unique fuel and will play a important
role in near future energy mix in Poland [1]. Compare to the rest of renewable energy sources,
biomass provide continuous electricity generation, and is the only widespread source of renewable
heat. Biomass co-firing and biomass combustion will contribute except to the reduction of CO2 and
SO2 emissions also in support sustainable development, increase energy security and regeneration
of rural areas, due to the increased of forestry and agricultural activity and the provision of small
scale heat and electrical energy production schemes. There are a number of barriers to overcome in
order to expand the biomass sector. Some of them includes economics and bureaucracy and
fragmented approaches from national and regional authorities but some also limitations connected
to biomass fuel characteristics [2].

When we would like to compare coal with wooden biomass, which both are still the dominant solid
fuels in heat and electricity production in Poland, often reveal inferior properties of biomass. When
we look closely on wooden biomass fuel properties we see that biomass has in most cases a high
moisture content, resulting in storage complications such as self heating and biological degradation,
lower energy densities, is a bulkier fuel (with poorer transportation, handling characteristics), more
tenacious (fibrous nature of biomass makes it difficult to reduce to small homogeneous particles).
Biomass properties mentioned above have negative impacts during energy thermal conversion such
as gasification system design limitations and lower combustion and co-firing efficiencies [3].

To improve the properties of wooden biomass and make it more coal-liked material a torrefaction
(biomass carbonization) process is necessary to by apply which is also called biomass roasting
process. Torrrefaction is a thermal treatment technique that occurs in a inert atmosphere.
Carbonization or torrefaction is a thermal degradation of biomass structures by heating it without
air contact under atmospheric pressure. It removes low weight organic volatile components and
moisture as well as depolymerises the long polysaccharide chains of biomass. This kind of process
of wood carbonization is quite complex research subject due to the fact that wood contains different
fractions. When we look in microscopic scale, wood cells are build from microfibrils, bundles of
cellulose molecules coated with hemicellulose. Another component of wood biomass is lignin
which is deposited between microfibrils and in some types of biomass in the amorphous regions of
the microfibril. All of those three fractions represents different thermal behavior [4]. As a
torrefaction product we get a hydrophobic solid fuel with greatly increased grindability and energy
density (on a mass basis). What is more important we lower requires energy to process the torrefied
biomass and it not longer requires additional separate handling facilities when we co-combusted
new fuel with coal in operating power plants. It is suggested that torrified biomass can be
compacted into high grade pellets with substantial superior fuel properties compared with standard
wood pellets from un-treated biomass. Carbonization process can be combined together with drying
and pelletisation process, with both energy end economy benefits. Biomass torrefaction process has
been suitable feedstock for flow gasification, which was not before considered feasible for raw
biomass. Due to the fact that carbonized biomass forms more than raw biomass solid fuel spherical
shaped particles during milling or grinding. In the group of negative aspects of torrefaction process
we can distinguish: requirements for separate plant, an input of additional energy for biomass
carbonization and the production of volatile streams, increasing the capital, operating and emission
control costs. Only the optimum balance between these new process costs plus energy consumption
as well as energy benefits and costs from a higher caloric value, better grindable are therefore
important factors for the future of torrefaction process. There are few publications presents
evaluation of wooden biomass torrefaction and concluded that the heating value and environmental
positive aspects and corresponding benefits thanks to carbonization are not much greater than
additional capital costs and the extra energy consumption, but it did indicated that biomass
torrefaction has potential in fuel densification. In this paper is presented the first results on
torrefaction of four kinds of wooden biomass, straw, pine, deciduous and coniferous wood. In the
second half of this paper a technical barrier of biomass co-firing is presented and advantages of
torrifed biomass co-combusted with coal is described. Torrefaction is a thermal pre-treatment step
for biomass co-firing which takes places in relatively low temperature range of 225-350 C to
produce a fuel with bigger energy density by decomposition of hemicellulose fractions mainly.
During biomass decomposition a three zones can be distinguished on the weight loss curves of
wood: first one correspond to the most reactive component hemicellulose which decomposition
starts at 225C and finished at 325C, second one is cellulose which decomposition temperature rate
is 300C up to 375C and last one lignin which represents the widgets temperature rate of 250-
500C [5]. Carbonization process of lignocellulosic biomass can be described by the weight loss
kinetics by using different experimental devices. Among those many devices are: fluidized bed
reactors, thermogarvimetric analyzers Fig.1. and tube furnaces.

Figure 1. TG analyser 209 T3 (Netzsch)

II. EXPERIMENT ON BIOMASS TORREFACTION, USING TGA, DTA ANALYSIS,

In this paper a method with thermogravimetric analyser (TGA) was chosen to determined the
weight loss kinetics of wood torrefaction. By using this kind of experimental method we can obtain
dynamic conditions, in which the sample with biomass is placed to an specific heating rate, but it is
important to known that experimental heating rates are very often slower than those in real process
equipment such as combustors, reactors or gasifiers. Because of the variations in ash content of
different samples, the measured weight where corrected using equation placed below:

Where, Winitial is the solid weight of the dry sample, Wash is the weight of the ash in the dry sample,
and WTGA is the solid weight that is measured as a function of time.

In the firs stage of this paper a none static conditions where carry on, in which the samples where
heated up from ambient temperature to 400C with assigned heating rate 10C/min in nitrogen
atmosphere. In second part a isothermal conditions were applied after the maximum mass loss ratio
in time was found from the data obtained in first experiments and after dynamic heating of the
samples (the samples stays 10 minutes in isothermal conditions in temp. range from 330 up to
350C) in argon atmosphere. In this kind of procedure, the heating rate is very important too, due to
the fact that the biomass must be heated from laboratory temperature to the temperature at which
the torrefaction reaction takes place and the weight loss kinetic is observed. When the heating rate
is too high, the results may be affected by heat transfer limitations within the specific sample with
biomass [6]. In the opposite situation when heating rate is too slow, the weight lost which occur
during warming up is big enough to influence on deduction and proper interpretation of
experimental kinetics data. Fortunately, for the low temperatures which are uses in biomass
carbonization (225-320C), the warm-up phase is not so long, even compare to low heating rates
uses in TGA method (10-50C/min) and the error which appear due to the weight loss in this phase
is acceptable.
Composition of biomass determines its behavior during carbonization process. In my research I
have chosen four different types of wooden biomass: pellets from deciduous wood, pellets from
coniferous wood, straw pellets and willow. All of those four types are coming from central part of
Poland (province of lodzkie) and were pre-dry to obtain moisture content in the range of 5-10%.

Table 1. Fuel characteristic of four wooden pellets from:

No. Decid- Conif- Pine Straw

-uous -erous

C,%

H,%

N,% <0,3 <0,3 <0,3

O,%

Zn

mg/ <100 <100 - -

kg

Pb

mg/ <10 <10 - -

kg

Ash,
<0,5 <1,5 <1,0 <0,5
%

Mois-

-ture, 8,1 6,3 8,2 4,2

LHV 18,5 17,5 18,0 16,0

kg

Table 2. Analysis

Properties Deciduous Coniferous

Cellulose 55% 45%

Lignin 30% 25%

Hemicellulose 10% 20%

Resin, Gum 4,5% 9,5%

Minerals 0,5% 0,5%

These four types, except straw and willow, are not much different in the distribution of three wood
fractions. Coniferous wood types and deciduouse wood type are considered as a soft wood and hard
wood respectively. The first one, coniferous wood can contain little less cellulose (35-50 wt%
versus 40-55 wt%), slightly more lignin (25-35 wt% versus 18-30 wt%) and similar on average
amount of hemicellulose (20-32 wt% versus 15-35 wt%). Anyhow, the composition of the
polysugars from which hemicelluloses fractions are formed is much different. Hemicelluloses from
coniferous wood contain 60-70 wt% of glucomannan and 15-30% of arabinogalactan whereas they
contain 80-90 wt% of 4-O methyl gluconoroxylan (referred to as xylan) for deciduous wood [7]. So,
it is important question whether thermal behaviour of coniferous and deciduous wood types is the
same, and if they react with similar rates in the carbonization temperature range.

The area closed by DTA curve given in fig.5 is described by the following equation:

Where, m is the mass of sample (mg); H is the heat of reaction (kJ mol-1); g is the geometric
shape constant for the apparatus (4h or 8a; h is the height of sample, a is the radius of sample
holder) (m); k is the thermal conductivity (Wm-1K-1); T is the differential temperature (K); t1 and
t2 are the integral limits of differential curve (K) [8].
III. BIOMASS CO-FIRING

Biomass co-firing with coal in conventional power plants is the main direction of polish and
European energy sector development. Biomass has the biggest potential from all kind of renewable
energy sources in Poland. Unfortunately combustion of untreated biomass (which has significant
amount of water and organic and mineral matter) cause series of technical and exploitation
problems in pulverized boilers and other equipment [9]. Negative impact of biomass on ash
deposition and ash sintering on the surface of the heat exchangers and other co-firing problems are
listed below:

1. Adding fuel with lower caloric value and with high humid content like wooden biomass makes
that it is necessary to use more water in the main stream of water injected. When we use 20% of
biomass in the main fuel stream the stream of injected water to the burners increase 50% compare
with the normal operating conditions. To solve that problem it is common to uses heat from biomass
for the burners in the lower part of boilers.

2. When we combust straw with coal together we need to take into account fact, that straw
characterize with low mineral matter content which makes that during co-firing we get less ash
formations,
Straw co-firing has slightly influence on heat transfer inside the boiler
Straw co-firing together with coal causes chloride corrosion. To solve those problems it is
important to match proper coal characteristics
Nearly all kind of wooden biomass has bigger than coal tendency to char formation which
influence on the boiler efficiency higher flue gases losses and lower efficiency [10]
Ash formation and it residue on the heat exchangers surface is solve by mechanical
removing or ash blowing
During co-combustion we can observe a significant increase in ash formation which is streaming
with flue gases. Due to that fact thermal effectively of boiler heating surface decrease with
increasing the biomass/coal fuel ratio. In addition the pollution emission is rising because of adding
to fly ash volatiles with very small granulation which are formed during condensation and fusion of
mineral volatile fractions. Especially during co-firing with biomass rich in sodium and phosphorus
it has big influence [11].

All of problems during biomass co-firing which were described above can be solve after co-
combustion process by mechanical removal of the ash deposition, mineral matter deposition on
hexs surface or by cleaning mills or replacing them with the new one. This rise the operational and
exploitation costs drastically and do not solve the sources of those problems. A promising biomass
pre-treatment technology which is cost-effective and soon will be commercialize is called
torrefaction.
During biomass carbonization process a high reduction of oxygen and hydrogen amount occur
compare to reduction of carbon because biomass is transform to more coal liked fuel called biocoal.
Average caloric values of torrifed biomass is in the range of 18 to 23 MJ/kg, low humid content (1-
6%) makes from biocoal a potential substitute fuel for organic coal [12]. Biocoal is not perfect
product which does not any disadvantages, a still low energy density is the main problem of
torrefaction products, this mean that in practice torrefaction should be combined together with
pelletisation. Thanks to those two processes combined together we can get a torrefied pellets which
are characterize with high energy density, low humidity, high humidity resistance and do not need a
any special storage facilities. Comparing biocoal pellets to standard pellets from un-treat biomass
which was not produced during biomass carbonization, torrefied pellets have strong hydrophobic
nature because of OH groups degradation and are more stronger and much more easier to transport
and store [13]. Torrefied pellets are more compact and can be directly combust in fluidized bed
combustor or pulverized boiler and represents faster ignition time of volatile matter and char.
Biomass torrefaction solves co-firing barriers in the sources and soon will be less expensive for
commercialization and easier from technical point of view to implement in industrial scale.

IV. CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER IMPROVEMENTS

The first results on biomass torrefaction which was done in different condition: dynamic heating
rate and static (isothermal conditions) and in different inert atmosphere: nitrogen and in argon
shows that lower temperature under which maximum mass loss ration in time is observed in argon
atmosphere (20C lower temperature than in nitrogen atmosphere). Additional research will need to
be done to explain if the different torrefaction atmosphere has exactly this influence on optimum
temperature under which the highest mass loss ratio occur. Also a quantity analysis of torgas (gas
evaporating during biomass torrefaction from heated samples) and this gas content analysis will be
done. The quantity analysis will be perform using FTiR spectroscopy analysis (Fourier Transform
Infrared Spectroscopy). After detail analysis of pellets from deciduous, coniferous, straw and pine
wood a different kind of grass (like miscanthus) will be analysis.
The data obtained from biomass thermal conversion will be use for preparation a model which will
simulate the biomass particles behavior during torrefaction process and co-firing with coal in one of
the existing and operating boiler in local CHP plant. The last stage on my research will be related to
create a model of co-combustion and heat transfer processes in a combustion chamber of fluidized
bed combustor feed with torrified biomass.

V. REFERENCES

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