1. Introduction
Agricultural residues in the form of straws, grasses, stalks, and husks (among others) are excellent sources for biofuel production [
1,
2,
3]. One of the major limitations of using biomass as a feedstock is its low bulk density, which ranges from 80 to 100 kg/m
3 for agricultural straws and grasses and from 150 to 200 kg/m
3 for woody resources such as wood chips and sawdust [
4] Inefficient transportation and large volume requirements for storage are some of the challenges associated with biomass energy usage [
5]. Biomass densification for both bioenergy and animal feed utilization has been the approach to mitigate the cost of transportation, handling, and storage [
6,
7]. Additionally, densified biomass improves fuel feeding in co-firing operations and provides an increased regulation of combustion, thus reducing particulate emissions [
8,
9,
10]. Densification is widely used in biomass industries, animal feed making, and pharmaceutical industries, and it is classified into pelletization, briquetting, and extrusion [
10,
11]. Biomass densification is defined as the compression or compaction of biomass to remove inter-and intra-particle voids [
5,
12]. Generally, the densification of materials requires two stages to take place: particle rearrangement and deformation [
1,
13,
14,
15,
16]. According to [
17], as cited in [
1], in the first stage, particles rearrange to bring themselves closer together and to reduce voids; little stress is needed to overcome interparticle and particle-to-wall friction. The particles retain their properties, and elastic deformation mainly occurs during this phase [
18]. In the second stage, with increasing applied pressure, most of the air is removed from the particulate mass and the elastic–plastic deformation of particles occurs [
13,
14,
15,
16,
18,
19].
Recently, studies have been conducted on biomass briquette densification to improve the performance of briquetting technology and to determine the optimum processing factors for producing quality briquettes for energy purposes [
2,
11,
20,
21,
22,
23,
24,
25,
26]. The energy requirement for the densification of biomass primarily depends upon the pressure applied and the moisture content of the material to be compressed, as well as the physical properties of the material, including particle size and initial bulk density [
8]. The sustainability of biomass densification depends on the energy consumption, emissions, and cost integrated with densification itself and the application of the densified biomass in the combustion or gasification process [
6,
27]. The machinery for biomass densification is experiencing greatly increasing interest as a result of the concern for its easier mechanical handling of biomass residues, lower storage, and transport space. However, the performance of the briquetting technology is influenced by several operating factors such as pressure, biomass type, particle size, quality, moisture content, feed rate, the forward speed of the machine, field conditions, feeding mechanisms, and power [
2]. To optimize the operating factors and the design of new technology for producing biomass briquettes, it is imperative to study and understand the mechanical and rheological behaviours of biomass materials under uniaxial compression [
1,
28,
29,
30,
31,
32,
33].
This information regarding briquette densification from ground sunflower stalks and hazelnut husks with the processing factors is inadequate in the literature. There is also an increasing need to source alternative fuels, especially for cooking to reduce deforestation in the rural areas of developed, developing, and underdeveloped countries. Therefore, these biomass materials could be economically attractive for fuel applications. The objectives of the study were to (i) experimentally and theoretically describe the force and deformation curves of densified briquettes from ground sunflower stalks and hazelnut husks and (ii) to calculate the densification energy (J), hardness (kN/mm), analytical energy (J), briquette volume (m3), bulk density of materials (kg/m3), briquette bulk density (kg/m3), and briquette volume energy (J/m3).
4. Discussion
The determined parameters (responses) from the densification tests of the ground sunflower stalk and hazelnut husk briquettes under different processing factors (forces, particle sizes, and moisture contents) were densification energy (J), hardness (kN·mm−1), analytical densification energy (J), briquette volume (m3), bulk density of materials (kg·m−3), briquette bulk density (kg·m−3), and briquette volume energy (J·m−3). The densification curves and energies were theoretically described using the tangent curve model.
For the ground sunflower stalk briquettes, the ANOVA multivariate tests of significance of the effect of the forces and particle sizes on the responses were significant (p < 0.05). The interaction effect of the force and particle size on the above-mentioned parameters was not significant (p > 0.05). However, based on the univariate results, force did not have significant effect on deformation. The particle size effect was only significant on bulk density and volume energy. In addition, the multivariate tests of significance of the effects of the forces and moisture contents and their interactions on the responses proved significant. Nevertheless, the univariate results showed that only moisture content had a significant effect on deformation. Moisture content and the interactions of force and moisture content also had no significant effects on analytical densification energy and hardness. The correlation between force and the dependent variables was significant, except for deformation, which was not significant. On the other hand, deformation only correlated significantly with particle size and moisture content compared to the other responses, which showed non-significant correlations. The regression results showed that the coefficients of the force and particle size on the models for densification energy, hardness, and volume energy were significant (p < 0.05); only the coefficients of the particle size were significant for the thickness, analytical energy, briquette volume, and bulk density models; and for deformation, only the force coefficient was significant. In addition, for the regression results of the interactions of force and moisture content, the coefficients of the force and moisture content were significant for thickness, densification energy, briquette volume, and volume energy. The models for deformation, analytical densification energy, bulk density, and briquette hardness showed only the force coefficients as being significant.
For the ground hazelnut husk briquettes, the ANOVA multivariate tests of significance of the effects of forces, particle sizes, moisture contents, and their interactions with the above-mentioned responses were significant (p < 0.05). However, the univariate results showed that the interaction effect of force and particle size on deformation, analytical densification energy, bulk density, and hardness was not significant (p > 0.05). The effects of force, moisture content, and interactions on deformation were not significant, but those of densification energy, analytical energy and volume energy were significant. The interaction effects of force and moisture content on thickness and briquette volume were not significant. Briquette bulk density and hardness showed that moisture content, as well as force and moisture content interactions, were non-significant. The correlation between deformation, force, and moisture content were non-significant, similar to the results of ground sunflower stalk briquettes. Densification energy, bulk density, hardness, and volume energy did not significantly correlate with particle size compared to thickness, analytical densification energy, and briquette volume which significantly correlated with particle size. There was no significant correlation between the dependent variables and moisture content. The coefficients of the factors (force and particle size) in the regression models describing all the responses of the ground hazelnut husk briquettes were significant compared to the processing factors (force and moisture content), where only the densification energy, analytical energy, and volume energy were significant. For deformation, all the predictors were not significant, whereas only the moisture content predictor was not significant for thickness, hardness, briquette volume, and bulk density.
Generally, based on the test of the sum of squares whole model against the sum of squares residual model, the factors/predictors had a significant effect on all the responses except for deformation, where the combined effect of force/moisture content and force/particle size had no significant effect. The coefficients of determination (R2) of the regression models ranged between 30% and 98%.
Furthermore, the densification energy of the briquettes was determined from the area under the force and deformation (densification) curves. Using the tangent curve model [
28,
40,
41,
42,
43], the analytical energy was determined. It is important to state that the application of the tangent model took the physical principles of the uniaxial compression process into account; these principle are that zero force means zero deformation, increasing force causes deformation to reach a maximum limit, and the integral of the force as a function of deformation from the zero to the maximum limit is the energy (that is, the densification energy for biomass materials and deformation energy in the case of bulk oilseeds). The ANOVA results of the tangent model coefficients were significant where the F-critical values were higher than the F-ratio values and/or
p-values greater than the alpha level of 0.05, thus confirming the suitability of the tangent curve model for describing the uniaxial compression data.
In the literature, the authors of [
29] explained that at low forces, straw bales had a small stiffness that changed with the applied force and the behaviour was almost linear; as the load increased further, a stiffening behaviour was realized. Additionally, the authors of [
1] reported that the density of the compacted biomass briquettes from barley, oat, canola, and wheat straw increased with increasing pressure and moisture content. The authors of [
8] highlighted that the briquette density of corn stover increased with pressure, whereas low moisture content between 5% and 10% (w.b.) resulted in denser, more stable, and more durable briquettes than the high moisture corn stover content of 15% (w.b.). In a separate study by the authors of [
32], the pellet density of wheat straw, barley straw, corn stover, and switchgrass increased as compressive pressure increased at a sample particle size of 3.2 mm and a moisture content of 12% (w.b.). The authors of [
44] also mentioned that increased particle size and moisture content decreased the durability of cassava stalk pellets. Additionally, our previous study [
28] showed that densified briquettes from jatropha seedcake with a particle size of 10 mm recorded the minimum energy followed by the particle size of 6.7 mm. However, the hardness of the briquettes at a maximum force of 400 kN (pressure of 141.47 MPa) was achieved at a particle size of 6.7 mm followed by the particle size of 5.6 mm. Finally, the authors of [
45] stated that corn stover feedstock moisture <34% (w.b.) and preheating >70 °C increased the density and durability of the pellets. The results of the present study are in agreement with published studies on different biomass materials and thus prove the scientific relevance of the work and provide an important contribution to the literature.
5. Conclusions
The effects of processing factors (forces, particle sizes, and moisture contents) on the mechanical behaviour of ground sunflower stalk and hazelnut husk briquettes were studied under uniaxial compression loading. ANOVA multivariate tests of significance, univariate tests, correlation and regression analyses, and normality tests were used to evaluate the statistical significance of the responses. The experimental data (densification curves and energies) were theoretically described using the tangent model by determining the force coefficient of the mechanical behaviour, the deformation coefficient of mechanical behaviour, and the fitting curve value. The coefficients of the model were statistically significant with a high coefficient of determination of 99%. The test of the sum of squares whole model against the sum of squares residual model of the regression analysis showed that the processing factors had a significant effect on all the responses except for deformation, where the combined effect of the force and moisture content and the force and particle size had no significant effect. The coefficients of determination (R2) of the established regression models ranged between 30% and 98%. The hardness of ground sunflower stalk and hazelnut husk briquettes was achieved at a higher force of 400 kN and particle sizes of 0–10 mm, altogether, and/or 0–3 mm at the moisture contents of 11.23% and 12.64% w.b., respectively. The optimum densification energy and hardness values of the ground sunflower stalk briquettes was between 1942.61 ± 72.22 and 1969.24 ± 52.88 J and between 4.25 ± 0.36 and 4.27 ± 0.42 kN/mm. For the ground hazelnut husk briquettes, the optimum densification energy and hardness values were between 2602.32 ± 50.66 and 2812.38 ± 7.33 J and between 4.72 ± 0.41 kN/mmand 4.97 ± 0.37 kN/mm. The briquette volume decreased along with increased forces for each particle size and moisture content. The bulk density of the briquettes increased along with forces for each particle size and moisture content, but it generally decreased for varying particle sizes and moisture contents at a specific force. The briquette volume energy increased along with forces and particle sizes, but it decreased with moisture contents.
Briquette production from ground sunflower stalks and hazelnut husks could be also attractive for the briquette market. However, binding additives such as cassava starch wastewater, rice dust, and okra stem gum, as well as pre-treatment methods and response surface designs of experiments should be considered in future research to fully understand the mechanical behaviour of the studied biomass materials, among others, to determine the optimum processing conditions for briquette production.