Performance improvement in olive stone's combustion from a previous carbonization transformation

Under the framework of circular economy, agricultural wastes are an interesting carbon-based feedstock for thermal energy and power generation. Their use could extend the availability of biomass-based fuel and, at the same time, would reduce negative environmental effects. However, depending on the residues' characteristics, their direct combustion in boilers presents some challenges which could be overcome with a carbonization pre-treatment. In this paper, the main mechanisms of thermochemical transformation of an abundant agricultural waste, olive stone, into biochar products via slow carbonization are analyzed, with emphasis on the effect of peak carbonization temperature. Thermogravimetric and differential scanning calorimetry analysis are used to evaluate the performance of the resulting biochars compared to raw olive stone in combustion processes and to assess the correlation between the peak carbonization temperature and compositional and fuel properties. Results show that with a prior treatment up to an optimum temperature of 800 °C the energy density is increased up to three times compared to the raw material. These findings suggest that carbonization of olive stones reduces the barriers to their direct use in current biomass boiler technology.