Currently, only 2.8% of total energy use in the world is renewable energy. As a climate target in 2020, the European Union has set a goal of increasing the renewable energy to 20%. Renewable energy includes biofuel such as pellets. Pellets use has already increased significantly and several large production units have been built in recent years. To achieve a competitive pellet, production must be improved in terms of quality, environmental impact, and electricity consumption. Adding additives can improve pellets strength, reduce CO2eq emissions and reduce energy consumption. The purpose is to investigate how different percentages of additive affect pellets to achieve a more sustainable and competitive biofuel. In the quality analysis where sustainability and hardness were investigated, oxidized corn starch showed the best result where sustainability increased from 94.8% to 97.86%. The hardness varied greatly from pellets to pellets from the same sample. Since the hardness varied so widely, it was impossible to say which sample who had the highest hardness. On the other hand, it is concluded that the oxidized cornstarch samples received higher hardness than the zero sample. In the environmental section, CO2equivalents for pellet production were investigated in Sweden, OECD member countries and non-OECD member countries in Europe. In Sweden and in OECD member countries, pellets production did not reduce the CO2eq emissions with any added additive. In non-OECD member countries, wheat starch was the best additive and reduced CO2eq emissions by 2.4%. The energy consumption in the pellet press was also analyzed and the results showed that all additives reduced energy consumption. The best additive in this study was wheat starch, which reduced electricity consumption by 3.9%.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kau-64753 |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Olofsson, Jonny |
| Publisher | Karlstads universitet, Fakulteten för hälsa, natur- och teknikvetenskap (from 2013) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf, application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess, info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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