Investigation on the physical properties of the charcoal briquettes prepared from wood sawdust and cotton stalk

The physical properties of the charcoal briquettes prepared from biomass waste are usually poor. In the paper, an alternative approach to the charcoal briquette preparation from the densified biomass briquette by carbonization was addressed. The carbonization process of the biomass briquettes prepared from cotton stalk (CS), wood sawdust (WS) and their blends was performed in a fixed bed at 400~600°C. The variation in the mass and volume of the biomass briquettes before and after the carbonization process and the physical properties of the resulted charcoal briquettes were investigated. The results indicate that the physical properties of the charcoal briquettes including bulk density and compression strength decreased firstly and then increased as the temperature increased. CS charcoal briquettes with better physical properties showed more volume shrinkage than WS charcoal briquettes after the carbonization process. However, the physical properties of the charcoal briquettes from the blends were poorer than expected due to the co-pyrolysis characteristics of CS and WS.