A study of microwave torrefaction of agricultural wastes for fuel upgrading

Abundant sources of oil palm based biomass provide an impetus for the sustainable generation of future feedstock. While this biomass in raw forms contains a lot of disadvantages that are not suitable for combustion and gasification such as low calorific value and fixed carbon content while high in moisture content. Therefore. in this research and investigation of torrefaction treatment is applied to the raw biomass in order to improve the properties of the biomass to be able to be used as feedstock. Torrefaction is a mild pre-treatment of biomass at a temperature between 200-300 °C. During torrefaction the biomass properties are changed to obtain a much better fuel quality for combustion and gasification. The process of torrefaction alters the physical properties of biomass, reducing fibrous tenacious nature. This could allow increased rates of co-milling and therefore co-firing I coal fired power stations which in turn would be enable a reduction in the amount of coal used and increase in the use of sustainable fuel, without the need for additional plant. In this research, microwave is used as the reactor to carry out the torrefaction process. A two process parameters of temperature and residence time Producing torrefied palm wood chips are adopted. The results from the different Conditions of microwave torrefaction shows a decent improvement in the palm wood chips as the agricultural waste used in this research.