Comparison Study of Sawdust and Palm Kernel Shell (PKS) for Pellet Fuel

The widespread availability of biomass, which is renewable and has no impact on global warming, has motivated extensive research in the past decade regarding the industrial development of thermochemical conversion plants. Biomass has the potential to play a significant role in the energy conversion decreasing the fossil fuel dependency. This study will compare the product gas produced (CH4, CO2, O2 and H2) by two different types of biomasses which are woody (sawdust) and agricultural (palm kernel shell, PKS). Another parameter that the author study is the effect of size of the particle which are less than 500 μm and less than 1000μm on the production of gas by using Gas Chromatography (GC) after conducting pyrolysis process by hydro-cracking reactor. Another objective is to analyze the concentration of product gas of pellets in hydro-cracking reactor (10g). The biomasses were characterized by instrumental analysis such as elementary analysis (CHNS-O), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and bomb-calorimeter. From TGA, three different regions can be distinguished from a TG curve and each range indicate different decomposition of biomass such as removal of moisture content, volatile matter and complete combustion. The result shows 10g of pellets tested in hydro-cracking reactor perform similar in the chemical characteristics and product gas, as compared to 10mg of powder using TG. The performance of PKS to be used in energy generation system is similar with the performance of sawdust, based on the product gas concentration.