A Comprehensive Review on Biomass Pelleting Technology and Electricity Generation from Biomass

Abstract

Biomass resources are considered renewable as they are naturally

occurring and when properly managed, may be harvested without

significant depletion of their sources. Biomass around the world is in

abundance and is suitable for energy utilisation. However, one of the

major problems associated with biomass is low bulk density. The

approach to checkmate these setbacks is to efficiently compact biomass

to produce pellets. A pellet is a solid of compressed combustible material

suitable for heating. This paper review showed that several research

studies have been carried out on pelleting/briquetting of biomass

materials such as sawdust, wood chips, rice husk, coconut shell, palm

residues etc. in order to increase their energy value, bulk density and

mechanical strength. It also showed that pellets and briquettes can be

manually produced or by using hydraulic and screw press technologies.

It revealed that pellets produced from the screw press technology are

better than the pellets or briquettes from the manual or hydraulic press

technology due to the fact that the screw press pellets/briquettes have

better mechanical strength, calorific value, combustion performance

efficiency, etc. The paper review also pointed out that pellets produced

from screw press technology has the potential to increase power

generation capacity from a biomass power plant.