Size Screening and Washing to Improve Pellet Quality Solid Biofuel from Plum Tree Pruning Biomass

Decarbonisation is at the core of energy and climate policy in the European Union. The European Green Deal reasserts the European Commission´s commitment to tackling climate and environmental challenges to reach a carbon-neutral society by 2050. Biomass is part of our low-carbon future. The use of biomass from pruning fruit trees to obtain biofuel pellets can be an interesting alternative in Southern Europe, generating added value in rural areas and favoring the development of the circular economy and green economy. Sustainable use of biomass replaces fossil fuels. Size fractionation and washing proceed to demineralization of the plum wood residues with high efficiencies. These biomass pretreatments reduce the ash content in the wood biomass with bark or debarked in water treatment and increase and reduce the ash content in different size fractions. The ash content has been studied in different treatments for plum biomass (with bark, without bark and fractionated at 3.15 and 8 mm). In turn, a washing treatment was carried out at room temperature with different times (5, 30, 60 and 180 min), together with a washing at a temperature of 45 ºC for the 8 mm fractionation.

The results obtained have confirmed that the debarking, fractionation and 30 min washing treatments are the most efficient for reducing the ash content of plum biomass.