Abstract

Different qualities of biofuel pellets were made from pine and spruce sawdust according to an industrial experimental design. The fatty/resin acid compositions were determined by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry for both newly produced pellets and those after 2 and 4 weeks of storage. The aldehydes/ketones compositions were determined by high performance liquid chromatography at 0, 2, and 4 weeks. The designs were analyzed for the response variables: total fatty/resin acids and total aldehydes/ketones. The design showed a strong correlation between the pine fraction in the pellets and the fatty/resin acid content but the influence decreased over storage time. The amount of fatty/resin acids decreased similar to 40% during 4 weeks. The influence of drying temperature on the aldehyde/ketone emission of fresh pellets was also shown. The amounts of emitted aldehydes/ketones generally decreased by 45% during storage as a consequence of fatty/resin acid oxidation. The matrices of individual concentrations were subjected to multivariate data analysis. This showed clustering of the different experimental runs and demonstrated the important mechanism of fatty/resin acid conversion.

Keywords

aldehydes; fatty acids; industrial experimental design; multivariate data analysis; softwood pellets

Published in

Annals of Occupational Hygiene
2009, Volume: 53, number: 8, pages: 797-805

SLU Authors

• Arshadi, Mehrdad

  • Department of Forest Biomaterials and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Geladi, Paul

  • Department of Forest Biomaterials and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Gref, Rolf

  • Department of Silviculture, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Bioenergy
Renewable Bioenergy Research
Analytical Chemistry


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/annhyg/mep058

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/26195