US 2018/0009133 A1Published application

Cellulosic micropowder production system

AssigneeBiomass Conversions, LLC

InventorSeiji Hata

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Abstract

An improved process is provided for reducing cellulosic biomass into air suspendable micropowder. Although the process is particularly suitable for processing empty fruit bunches of oil palms, it is adaptable to most cellulosic biomass. The incoming biomass has a water content of around 50% and is reduced to centimeter scale pieces by a chipper or similar device. These pieces are then processed by a tandem line of four pairs of grooved rollers each successive roller having a larger number of grooves. This process squeezes moisture from the biomass and reduces the material into millimeter scale pieces. After an optional drying stage, the material is fed into a terrace line of three or four essentially smooth rollers which squash the material and reduce the particle size into a micrometer scale. Finally, the material is suspended in an air stream and fractionated by a cyclone and bag filter system.

Claims7

Dependent claims

A process for efficiently and rapidly reducing the particle size and moisture content of cellulosic biomass comprising the steps of:

feeding centimeter scale cellulosic biomass pieces into a squeezer tandem roller line comprising a series of paired rollers having interdigitated surface grooves with successive roller pairs having a larger number of grooves thereby squeezing moisture from the biomass and reducing the squeezed biomass to millimeter scale particles;
conducting the squeezed biomass into a terraced squasher roller line comprising a series of paired rollers arranged so that the first roller pair is above the successive roller pair with the surfaces of the rollers being essentially smooth and with each roller pair having a scraper plate to scrape biomass material from the roller surface thereby reducing the squashed biomass into submillimeter scale particles;
and
suspending the squashed biomass in an air stream which passes into a filter system which directs larger biomass particles back to the squasher roller line for additional processing and passes smaller micrometer scale particles as end product.

1 more element

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.