• Journal of Korea Technical Association of The Pulp and Paper Industry
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.18-28
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• 2014

Renewable Portfolio Standards(RPS) is a regulation that requires a renewable energy generated from eco-friendly energy sources such as biomass, wind, solar, and geothermal. The RPS mechanism generally is an obligatory policy that places on electricity supply companies to produce a designated fraction of their electricity from renewable energies. The domestic companies to supply electricity largely rely on wood pellets in order to implement the RPS in spite of undesirable situation of lack of wood resources in Korea. This means that the electricity supply companies in Korea must explore new biomass as an alternative to wood. Palm kernel shell (PKS) and empty fruit bunch (EFB) as oil palm wastes can be used as raw materials used for making pellets after their thermochemical treatment like torrefaction. Torrefaction is a pretreatment process which serves to improve the properties including heating value and energy densification of these oil palm wastes through a mild pyrolysis at temperature typically ranging between 200 and $300^{\circ}C$ in the absence of oxygen under atmospheric pressure. Torrefaction of oil palms wastes at above $200^{\circ}C$ contributed to the increase of fixed carbon with the decrease of volatile matters, leading to the improvement of their calorific values over 20.9 MJ/kg (=5,000 kcal/kg) up to 25.1 MJ/kg (=6,000 kcal/kg). In particular, EFB sensitively responded to torrefaction because of its physical properties like fiber bundles, compared to PKS and hardwood chips. In conclusion, torrefaction treatment of PKS and EFB can greatly contribute to the implement of RPS of the electricity supply companies in Korea through the increased co-firing biomass with coal.

• Journal of Korea Technical Association of The Pulp and Paper Industry
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.24-34
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• 2015

Domestic companies supplying electricity must increase obligatory duty to use renewable energy annually. If not met with obligatory allotment, the electricity-supply companies must pay RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standards) penalty. Although the power plants using a pulverizing coal firing boiler could co-fire up to around 3 per cent with wood pellets mixed in with coal feedstock without any major equipment revamps, they recorded only about 60 per cent fulfillment of RPS. Consequently, USD 46 million of RPS penalty was imposed on the six power supplying subsidiaries of GENCOs in 2014. One of the solutions to reduce the RPS penalty is that the power supply companies adopt the co-firing of torrefied lignocellulosic biomass in coal plants, which may contribute to the use of over 30 per cent of torrefied biomass mixed with bituminous coals. Extra binder was required to form pellets using torrefied biomass such as wood chips, PKS (Palm Kernel Shell) and EFB (Empty Fruit Bunch). Instead of corn starch, 30, 50 and 70 per cent of Larix saw dusts were respectively added to the torrefied feedstocks such as Pinus densiflora chips, PKS and EFB. The addition of saw dusts led to the decrease of the calorific values of the pellets but the forming ability of the pelletizer was exceedingly improved. Another advantage from the addition of saw dusts stemmed from the reduction of ash contents of the pellets. Finally, it was confirmed that torrefied oil palm biomass such as PKS and EFB could be valuable feedstocks in making pellets through improved binding ability.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Gas
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.25-30
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• 2011

Biogas obtained from the biodegradable organic wastes in an anaerobic digester consists of $CH_4$ and inert gases such as $CO_2$ and $N_2$. Since the composition of biogas varies by anaerobic digester conditions and the origin of wastes, it is necessary to respond to these variations so as to make stable combustion and accomplish high efficiency when it is used as a fuel for power generating SI engines. In this study, efforts have been made to investigate the effect of changes in the calorific values of biogas on the engine performance and exhaust characteristics. The biogas was simulated by supplying of $CH_4$ with $N_2$ dilution of various ratios, and ECM was developed to achieve accurate control of ignition and combustion. The results show that as the $CH_4$ concentration of the biogas decreases, the optimal spark timing is advanced due to the elevated thermal capacity and lowered $O_2$ concentration of the in-cylinder charge. Furthermore, since combustion temperature was reduced by increased inert gas, $NO_x$ emissions decreased, whereas THC emissions increased.

• Journal of the Korean Applied Science and Technology
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• v.33 no.4
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• pp.855-863
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• 2016

Most greenhouse gases were arisen from the generation and use of energy, more than about 95 % of greenhouse gas from the traffic section was resulted by the transportation fuels. Also, when using the $CO_2$ emission factor suggested at IPCC G/L, there was the weakness which did not reflect the own property of fuel by country. And most industrialized countries have applied with the $CO_2$ emission factor of Tier 2 or Tier 3 to make the national greenhouse report to submit to UN according to the Kyoto Protocol. In this study, the transportation fuels using in domestic like unleaded gasoline, diesel, etc were analysed to identify the physical/chemical properties and these data were used to calculate the $CO_2$ emission factor of each fuels. And the study analysed the time series analysis to compare the property of fuels according to the change of time.

• Journal of Climate Change Research
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.27-39
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• 2013

In this study, the anthracite coal being used as fuel in Korea were classified into different types. These types include the domestically produced anthracite, imported anthracite used as raw material, and imported anthracite used as fuel. Each of the calorific values and greenhouse gas emission factors were calculated. The calculation of greenhouse gas emission factors resulted in the domestically produced anthracite as $111,477{\pm}4,508kg\;CO_2/TJ$, the imported anthracite used as raw material as $108,358{\pm}4,033kg\;CO_2/TJ$, and anthracite used as fuel was displayed as $103,927{\pm}8,367kg\;CO_2/TJ$. Additionally, the amount of greenhouse gas emission based on these calculated emission factors was displayed as $6,216,942ton\;CO_2$, which resulted as 12.7% lower than the green house gas emission amount which was calculated without distinguishing anthracite coal in details. Therefore, collecting activity data through a detailed classification of anthracites facilitate a more accurate calculation of greenhouse gas emission amount compared to collecting activity data through combination. Furthermore, since the anthracite coal used domestically possesses characteristics differing from the anthracite coal proposed by the IPCC, anthracite coal should be classified for each purpose and calculated for the improvement of the national greenhouse gas inventory.

• Journal of the Korea Organic Resources Recycling Association
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.47-56
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• 2008

The objective of this research is to evaluate the optimum recycling methods for the sewage sludge cakes at different microwave power-settings and for different periods of time. The dehydrated sewage sludge cakes used in this study was obtained from N wastewater treatment plan in the P City. The beginning drying processes were carried out in a microwave oven with 2,450 MHz frequency and power ranges of 1kW to 4 kW. The continuous conveyer drying system was also operated with 2,450 MHz frequency and power setting, ranging from of 1 kW to 6 kW. Initial moisture content of the sewage cake is 78~80%, and the moisture content decreased rapidly up to 0.2~2(wt%) within short periods due to breaking the cell walls. This study is also conducted to evaluate the characteristics of sewage sludge cakes with respect to important physical parameters effect on the thermal kinetics for evaporation water in the sludge which are operation times, moisture contents, drying rates, input amounts, flow rates and calorific values. It takes 60 minutes and 120 minutes to reach the critical moisture contents with power setting of 4 kW for 3kg/min and 6kg/min of the flow rates respectively. It takes 120 minutes and 110 minutes to reach the critical moisture contents with flow rates of 2.5 cm/min and sludge input of 6kg/min for the power settings of 4 kW and 6 kW respectively. The most effective value of the power for drying the sludge is 4 kW. Operation with 6kg/min and 4kW on 2cm of the sludge thickness can be effectively and inexpensively to reach the critical moisture contents, when you compare 2cm of the sludge thickness with 1cm and 3cm of the sludge thickness.