Abstract
Recently, renewable energy has a great interest because of environmental problems such as global warming caused by fossil fuels. Biomass is one of the renewable energy sources. It is environment-friendly and carbon neutral fuel. And the amount of the biomass is huge. But, biomass has high moisture and volatile contents. Also, the energy density and heating value of the biomass are low comparing with other fossil fuels. Hence, it needs to be upgraded to increase the fuel quality. Biomass pyrolysis is one option to increase energy density of the biomass. Pyrolysis of biomass is thermal treatment process that aims to produce oil, gas and char. Torrefaction of biomass is one of the pyrolysis methods and is the pretreatment before gasification or combustion. Torrefaction process reduces volatile content and raises the fixed carbon content. Hence, biomass properties are changed by torrefaction to have a better fuel quality.Also, the grindability is increased. In this research, torrefaction is performed to improve fuel characteristic of Larchwood.
