Environmental and sustainable economical concerns are generating a growing interest in biofuels predominantly produced from biomass. It would be ideal if an energy conversion device could directly extract energy from a sustainable energy resource such as biomass. Unfortunately, up to now, such a direct conversion device produces insufficient power to meet the demand of practical applications. To realize the future of biofuel-fed fuel cells as a green energy conversion device, efforts have been devoted to the development of carbon-based nanomaterials with tunable electronic and surface characteristics to act as efficient metal-free electrocatalysts and/or as supporting matrix for metal-based electrocatalysts. We present here a mini review on the recent advances in carbon-based catalysts for each type of biofuel-fed/biofuel cells that directly/indirectly extract energy from biomass resources, and discuss the challenges and perspectives in this developing field
This paper discusses a method for determining the kinetics of biomass pyrolysis based on comparing isoconversional methods, such as the Kissinger and KAS methods, and least squares fitting in a parallel reaction scheme with three pseudo-components roughly representing cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. The activation energies of the different pseudo-components reported in the literature vary widely. This variation could be reduced if care were taken to determine the kinetics of biomass pyrolysis: First, the reference experiments with pure cellulose are reproduced to validate the thermogravimetric analysis. Then, experiments are performed and analyzed with different heating rates and isoconversional methods are employed to verify the reliability of the experiments and to avoid selecting inappropriate reaction models in a fitting routine.
Rwanda is a landlocked country in the East Africa. It is surrounded by Uganda, Tanzania, Congo and Burundi. Rwanda is a fast developing country and it spends most of its revenues to import fossil fuels from either through Mombasa Port in Kenya or Dar es Salaam port in Tanzania because the energy production in Rwanda is not sufficient for its development.
Transporting the fuels from these ports, add on to the cost of all materials, cement industry being no exception. There are three cement companies in Rwanda. The cement industries could not run in full production due to the shortage of fuel. Moreover, Rwanda is importing all the construction materials such as steel, roofing materials, etc from its neighbouring countries. This increases the cost of construction and the common man find difficult to own a house. In order to sustain the energy needs of Rwanda, different sources of energies should be focused. They are Peat, Geothermal, Methane gas, solar, wind, waste materials and Municipal wastes. Without affecting the environment, there is an urgent need to find a solution on sustainable energy in Rwanda. This paper discusses about the possible sources of energy in Rwanda which will improve the energy sustainability and turn the economy of Rwanda.
Proceedings of the international conference on advances in cement and concrete technology in Africa
(2013)
A kinetic model of smouldering of pine wood is determined by thermo-gravimetric analysis (TGA), describing the reactions of wood pyrolysis, wood oxidation and char oxidation. Thermo-gravimetric experiments were conducted with constant heating rates ranging from 2.5 to 10 K/min in atmospheres of pure nitrogen and mixtures of nitrogen and oxygen (with 20.5%, 8.2% and 4.3% O2). At first wood pyrolysis and char oxidation experiments are carried out in an independent way. Then smouldering experiments are conducted, which combine the two previous reactions with wood oxidation. Finally, the heats of the reactions are determined by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The results are discussed, compared with the literature and the derived kinetic model is presented, which includes five components: three pseudo-components of wood – representing roughly cellulose, hemi-cellulose and lignin – as well as char and ashes.
A mathematical model to predict the heating-up in open air wood chip piles has been developed. This model includes the heat production from chemical, physical and microbial exothermal processes. In the manuscript the laboratory experiments needed to develop and validate the model are described. In addition, temperature and gas concentrations were measured in two large-scale wood piles (volumes bigger than 1000 m³), in order to provide the applicability of the model to large-scale scenarios. The predictions of the model and the large-scale experimental data showed good agreement concerning the maximum temperature reached inside an open air wood pile. Special attention has been devoted to the microbial processes, since they proved to be the most important cause of heat production in the early stages of storage. This work is intended to help in predicting and thus avoiding possible self-ignition scenarios for this type of wood storage.