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Pretreatment and Pelletization of Woody Biomass

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Book cover Pretreatment Techniques for Biofuels and Biorefineries

Part of the book series: Green Energy and Technology ((GREEN))

Abstract

Pretreatment is a first crucial step to modify the structure of wood via physical, chemical, and biological treatment for cost effective and sustainable fuels and chemicals production. Different pretreatments would be selected to upgrade the characteristics of wood with respect to different applications and process efficiencies. High-temperature pretreatment (e.g., torrefaction) at the temperature range greater than 250 °C led to higher degradation rate of sugars and extractives, which is not preferable for fuel and chemicals production from lignocellulosic biomass. Instead, high-temperature pretreatment was used to upgrade the solid fuel for thermochemical conversion (e.g., combustion and gasification). It can remove the moisture and volatiles with a low-heating value of the native biomass, which favors for the ease of fuel combustion compared to the raw wood. In addition, it can increase the hydrophobicity of the biomass which improves their handling and storage performance. In this chapter, the production chain of the wood pellet production with incorporating recent novel pretreatment technologies (torrefaction, steam explosion, and hydrothermal carbonization) were discussed. The resulted pellets are a uniform feedstock for producing chemicals, heat, and energy via biochemical and thermochemical conversion, respectively.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biomass and Bioenergy Research Group, Clean Energy Research Center, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of British Columbia, 2360 East Mall, Vancouver, B.C., V6T 1Z3, Canada

    Pak Sui Lam, Zahra Tooyserkani, Ladan Jafari Naimi & Shahab Sokhansanj

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  1. Pak Sui Lam
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  2. Zahra Tooyserkani
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  3. Ladan Jafari Naimi
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  4. Shahab Sokhansanj
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Correspondence to Pak Sui Lam .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xuefulu 88, Kunming, 650223, China, People's Republic

    Zhen Fang

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Sui Lam, P., Tooyserkani, Z., Jafari Naimi, L., Sokhansanj, S. (2013). Pretreatment and Pelletization of Woody Biomass. In: Fang, Z. (eds) Pretreatment Techniques for Biofuels and Biorefineries. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32735-3_5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-32735-3_5

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