Improving knife milling performance for biomass preprocessing by using advanced blade materials
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Materials Science & Technology Division
- Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States). Bioenergy Feedstock Technologies Department
- Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States). Operations Research and Analysis Group
- Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States). Materials and Manufacturing Science & Technology Division
- Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States)
Mechanical preprocessing of biomass, including size reduction, is a crucial step in converting biomass into biofuel. However, feedstock inevitably contains abrasive intrinsic and extrinsic inorganics that may cause excessive tool wear in preprocessing. Here, this work demonstrates that performance of a knife mill can be significantly improved by applying a more wear-resistant blade material. A series of full-scale knife mill tests were performed for size reduction of forest residue using blades of tungsten carbide (WC–Co), iron-borided tool steel, and diamond-like carbon (DLC) coated tool steel. Blade material loss was quantified in correlation to the amount of feedstock processed and wear mechanisms were investigated via worn surface characterization. While the thin DLC coating was removed quickly, the WC-Co and iron-borided blades improved the tool life by 8X and 3X compared with the M2 tool steel blades (baseline), respectively. The in-situ throughput and power consumption measurements provided additional insights. The WC-Co and iron-borided blades had ~3X higher throughput than the baseline blades by the end of the test with lower normalized power consumption. The experimental results were then used as input for a techno-economic analysis, which suggested that the more wear resistant blades could cut the knife milling cost by $2–3 per ton of biomass processed with downtime reduced by 65–85%.
- Research Organization:
- Argonne National Laboratory (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Idaho National Laboratory (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Office of Sustainable Transportation. Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO)
- Grant/Contract Number:
- AC02-06CH11357; AC05-00OR22725
- OSTI ID:
- 2217463
- Alternate ID(s):
- OSTI ID: 1971047
- Journal Information:
- Wear, Vol. 522
- Publisher:
- ElsevierCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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