Optimisation of Binder Formulation for Sawdust Pellets

Greenhouse gas emissions and uncertainty about future fossil fuel prices are among the factors driving the development and use of biomass as a renewable energy source. This work focuses on the recovery of waste, most notably, sawdust, by transforming it into solid fuel using the densification method. A binder used in this work is used for the first time and it also comes from waste. It is a mixture of biodiesel produced using waste cooking oil, and glycerol which is a byproduct resulting from this production. The objective is to determine an optimized formulation which would make it possible to give pellets with interesting characteristics in terms of moisture content, ash content, resistance, density, duration of the flame, etc. On the other hand, the binders used aim to increase the calorific value giving a solid-liquid fuel mixture tested for the first time. Design of experiments methodology was used with two-component mixture design of experiments to optimize binder composition for sawdust pellet formulation. The results of the study show that our waste presents a very interesting source for the production of solid fuel. The characteristics of the solid fuel produced meet the standards with better values for some properties.