Bagana e talo de carnaúba como matéria-prima para combustíveis sólidos

Abstract

The necessity to find new biomass resources to generate power led to study some wastes from carnauba wax production, a plant also known as Copernicia prunifera, due to its availability in Brazil’s northeast region. The materials used in this study were carnauba straw after wax extraction and carnauba stalk. Initially, it was desired to verify the in natura physicochemical properties of each material. Higher heating value was estimated in 17,262 MJ/kg for carnauba straw and 16,555 MJ/kg for carnauba stalk. It was verified an increase to 21,529 MJ/kg when analyzing carnauba straw at 250 m granulometry and a moisture reduction from 11,10 % to 9,55 %. The elemental analysis result indicated that the carnauba straw had 44,43 % of C, 5,34 % of H, 2,25 % of N, 1,81 % of S and 46,17 % of O and, from these data, lower heating value was estimated in 16,24 MJ/kg. For the carnauba stalk were obtained 44,03 % of C, 5,14 % of H, 1,35 % of N, 1,87 % of S and 47,61 % of O with a 15,83 MJ/kg lower heating value. It was made a carbonization carried out in a muffle furnace, hydrothermal carbonization and pyrolisis of carnauba straw in order to attempt to raise the heating value. For the carbonization, it was obtained the best higher heating value after the treatment at 300 ºC, which was equal to 20,686 MJ/kg. By the hydrothermal carbonization, it was possible to obtain hydrochar whose higher heating value was 26,081 MJ/kg and through the pyrolisis process, it was obtained solid products whose higher heating value was 21,692 MJ/kg. Through those tests, it was observed that the hydrothermal carbonization produced a solid biofuel which had the highest calorific value in among the used processes, and it is necessary to check in more detail the properties of this hydrochar.