Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Urban tree-management operations generate substantial amounts of woody biomass that often remain underutilized despite their potential value as a local renewable fuel. This study investigates the possibility of using woodchips and sawdust delivered from municipal tree-cutting activities as boiler fuel, with a specific focus on how fuel moisture, particle size, and natural-fiber packaging influence combustion performance and emission characteristics. In collaboration with a municipal greenery-cutting company, representative batches of biomass were collected, characterized through proximate and ultimate analyses, and combusted in a small-scale boiler. Unlike conventional densification routes (pelletization/briquetting), the proposed approach uses combustible natural-fiber packaging to create modular ‘macro-pellets’ from minimally processed urban residues. The study quantifies how this low-energy packaging concept affects emissions and boiler efficiency relative to loose chips/sawdust at two moisture levels. The results demonstrate that packaging the fuel in jute bags markedly improved performance for both woodchips and sawdust by stabilizing the fuel bed, enhancing air distribution, and reducing emissions of incomplete combustion products. Boiler efficiency increased from approximately 60% for raw unpackaged fuels to 71–75% for the dried and jute-packaged variants. The findings highlight that simple preprocessing steps—drying and packaging in natural-fiber bags—can substantially enhance the energy recovery potential of urban green waste, offering a practical pathway for integrating municipal biomass residues into a sustainable fuel.
Source: Energies
DOI: 10.3390/en19020391
Institution: Silesian University of Technology
Language: English
Subfield: Biomedical Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $3,137
OpenAlex ID: W7123547838
FWCI:
Cites:
Cited by:
Related to: