Análise imediata e avaliação do poder calorífico superior da biomassa de carnaúba com diferentes aglutinantes para uso em forno industrial

Abstract

With the objective of enabling the use of new alternative energy sources and aiming at the reuse of the by-products of the agricultural process in the Jaguaribe Valley region, the possibility of producing biomass from the carnauba stalk (Copernicia prunifera) was verified. In order to be better used, the stalk must be processed (crushed and compacted/briquetted) and sold to industries that need heat in their production processes. In order to facilitate the commercialization and compaction of this biomass, the main objective of this work was to identify the best combination between carnauba stalk and binder material to be used as biomass in furnaces of transformation industries, taking as reference the superior calorific value (PCS ) through Immediate Analysis and Analysis of Variance (ANOVA). For this, an immediate analysis was performed (Moisture content, volatiles, ash and fixed carbon), determination of Higher Calorific Power for detailing the material, in addition to ANOVA and Two Way ANOVA for statistical analysis. Dry carnauba stalks were selected as the base biomass and coconut fiber, cashew nut shell and cashew chips as binders. The study was carried out at concentrations of 60, 70 and 80% of stalk and 40, 30 and 20%, respectively, of each residue selected as binder. All analyzes were performed in triplicate. As a result, it was seen that chestnut shell is the most suitable biomass for the use of carnauba blend as solid fuel. The composition of 80% carnauba and 20% of cashew nut shell showed a moisture content of 9.60%, volatile content of 83.50%, ash content of 5.16%, fixed carbon content of 27, 58% and a higher calorific value of 19.04 [MJ/kg], which was the highest in this study.