Chemical Engineering and Processing 38 (1999) 441 447

www.elsevier.com/locate/cep

Recent advances in biofuel drying

Roland Wimmerstedt *
Department of Chemical Engineering 1, Lund Uni6ersity, PO Box 124, S22100 Lund, Sweden
Received 31 March 1999; accepted 9 April 1999

Abstract
Sweden must be regarded as one of the leading countries to utilize biofuels for heating purposes. A national survey of technique
and economy for biofuel drying systems has therefore been deemed to be of wider interest. As well flue gas dryers as steam dryers
are used but in different applications. Operating experiences from both types are reported. A thermodynamic analysis of various
system solutions is also performed. Rotary flue gas dryers dominate the market in fuel factories, which are not colocated with
other industrial activities. Steam dryers are best suited for integrated systems, where their capability for heat recovery can be
exploited. A new approach is to recover electricity instead of heat. This is accomplished in a system integrated in a district heating
plant with power cogeneration. The environmental issues are of ever increasing concern and the release of volatile organic
compounds (VOC) during drying and influence of the fuel moisture content on emissions from the combustion are discussed.
1999 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Biofuel; Combustion; Steam drying; Flue gas drying; Operating experiences; Thermodynamics

1. Introduction
Drying is probably the separation process which,
counted world wide, has the highest energy consumption. Optimization of the energy use is thus of primary
concern whenever designing a drying process. The most
important measure is of course a correct design of the
dryer, others being use of heat recovery by heat exchangers or heat pumps. Via the new concept of process integration the possibilities offered by
incorporating the dryer in the total process have been
pointed out. This can mean considerable savings in the
total process an example being the pulping process
where the total drying can be achieved by waste heat
from the evaporation plant. The saving of low temperature heat energy may however also lead to losses in
cogeneration capacity and this in some cases means a
sub optimization. These interrelated issues will be discussed in this paper in context with biofuel drying.
The Swedish Government highly favors the use of
renewable fuels. This is accomplished by a very high tax

Dedicated to Professor Em. Dr-Ing. Dr h.c. mult. E.-U. Schlunder on the occasion of his 70th birthday.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +46-46-2228285; fax: 46-462224526.

on the emission of carbon dioxide from fossil fuels used

for domestic heating purposes. During the last few
years this has resulted in a dramatic increase in the use
of biofuels, mostly originating from wood wastes. New
district heating boilers, suited for moist fuels are being
built, but oil and coal fired boilers are also converted to
be used with dried biofuels. This has created a market
for fuel in the form of pellets or powder, which is
produced in so-called fuel factories. An essential part of
these factories are the fuel dryers. A national research
program, with the aim to improve the drying systems,
has been launched. As part of this, a study of the
technology used today was performed by the author [1].
Results from this study are used throughout this paper.

2. Biofuel fired boilers

Combustion of a fuel can be divided into three
phases; drying of the fuel, gasification of volatile compounds and final combustion of the solid residue. The
water in the fuel must thus be removed before the final
combustion. The question is, whether this shall take
place outside the boiler system or within it. Biofuels are
in the following considered as wood residues and a

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R. Wimmerstedt / Chemical Engineering and Processing 38 (1999) 441447

typical value of their water content is 50% or lower

(based on the wet weight). With such moisture contents
it is possible to use the fuel directly in the boiler
without drying it first. Drying is thus optional.
If the fuel is to be used in small scale, 1 5 MW, it is
preferentially fired as dried material in grate ovens with
effective cooling of the grate. Grate fired boilers of
traditional type are dominating in the 5 20 MW area.
These boilers are sensitive to the fuel moisture content.
If they are designed for moist fuels the first part of the
grate is designed as a band dryer. Flue gases are
recycled to the first part of the grate, where they
together with the radiating walls deliver the heat necessary for drying. If this type of boiler is fired with dry
fuels, a cooling of the grate by the combustion air must
be foreseen.
In large-scale applications fluidised bed boilers are
now dominant on the market. Both bubbling fluidised
beds (BFB) and circulating fluidised beds (CFB) are
used for biofuel firing. BFBs were originally limited to
a rather narrow specification of fuels but now flue gas
recycling is used in both types of boilers. Nevertheless
both types still have limitations in the moisture contents
that can be accepted. For combustion of dry biofuels in
large scale applications suspension fired boilers with
reversed flue gas conduction have been developed.
With large-scale boilers, district heating is of course a
necessity and cogeneration of electricity is then optional
at high district heating loads. Recently three big plants
with thermal loads of 50 80 MW have been built in
Sweden. They all use CFB boilers and have steam data
of about 140 bar and 530C. Electricity is produced in
two turbine stages with a backpressure of about 1 bar.
Gasification technique means that a combined cycle
can be used with better cogeneration capacity. This
type of application is especially interesting from a drying point of view, since drying of the fuel before the
gasifier is a requisite to produce a high calorific gas. So
far this technique has not established itself to be cost
efficient enough to compete with traditional electricity
production. A pilot plant is, however, in operation
since a couple of years.
A special literature survey was performed to clarify
the relation between fuel moisture content and the
boiler plant emissions. As expected it was difficult to
obtain an unequivocal relation, since the type of equipment and the mode of operation are important for the
results. Generally it can be stated, that increasing fuel
moisture content means higher emissions of hydrocarbons, since the combustion tends to be more incomplete
with increasing moisture. This is especially so in smaller
units. However, a well-controlled fluidised bed boiler
can give a satisfactory result even at very high moisture
contents. The situation regarding NOx is even more
complicated. Theoretically, there should be a correlation between increasing moisture content and decreas-

ing emissions. In practice, this can be counteracted by

factors such as varying excess air at different points in
the oven and possibilities for improved control when
firing dried fuels. The last factor can explain the small
emissions encountered at suspension firing.

3. Drying equipment used

In an investigation similar to this from 1984 a thorough description of biofuel dryers used and under
development at that time was given [2,3]. A striking
reduction of equipment available on the market today
has taken place. Especially equipment working according to heat pump principles never succeeded to penetrate the market.
Dryers used for biofuels can be divided into two
categories; flue gas dryers and steam dryers. Among the
former category rotary dryers now completely dominate the market. The types used are uncomplicated
units of the open-center type. The flue gas is fed from a
special furnace, firing raw or dried fuels. It can also be
fed from some other source, for example a nearby
boiler. The normal capacity of a rotary dryer is maximum ca. 12 tons of evaporated water/h. The limitation
is the drum diameter, which should be below 4 m, to
ensure that a prefabricated unit could be transported to
the plant by truck. The price for such a unit, including
gas cleaning, is about 10 MSEK or 1.25 MUSD. The
price for a separate furnace for the same capacity is
about 0.75 MUSD.
Pneumatic conveying dryers were believed to have an
interesting future during the 1980s but they have almost
disappeared from the market today due to reasons
discussed further on. A large number of cascading bed
dryers were used earlier especially in the pulp industry.
These dryers were used to condition the fuel before
grate firing in bark boilers. The flue gases were taken
from the boiler after the economizer and left the dryer
at about 100C. The marketing of these dryers has been
discontinued due to improved boiler capability to handle moist fuels.
Steam drying technique was used early for biofuel
drying in Sweden. In the 1970s, an indirectly heated
flash dryer was developed at Chalmers University of
Technology. This well-known, so called Hedstrom
dryer [4], was originally intended for use as a pulp
dryer. The first unit for bark drying was installed at a
Swedish pulp and paper company as early as 1982 and
it had been in operation for 15 years when it was
dismantled in 1997. Two other installations for peat
and sawdust were taken into operation in 1986 and
they are still running. One new plant was taken in
operation in 1997. This is used for a fuel factory
integrated with a district heating plant. The dryer has
been changed in direction towards a normal flash dryer

R. Wimmerstedt / Chemical Engineering and Processing 38 (1999) 441447

and the main part of the heat is supplied in the pre-superheater. The rest is supplied in two heat exchangers
with flow from top to bottom. This has lead to lower
investment costs and reduced operating costs due to
lower pressure drop. The reliability of operation is also
claimed to have improved since the material is less
sticky when it reaches the heat exchangers.
Two of the Niro-type fluidised bed dryers [5] have
been installed recently. This type of dryer was originally
developed for drying of sugar beet pulp but it is here
used in a new application. One installation is at a
municipal district heating plant where fuel is dried for
the plants own boilers of grate firing type, which have
been rebuilt for biofuels instead of coal. The second
installation is at a pulp mill within an integrated fuel
factory. Another type of steam dryer has appeared on
the market recently. It is called Bed Mixing Dryer and
is marketed by the Finnish company IVO [6]. The dryer
will be utilized together with fluidised bed combustion.
The dryer is of the flash type, with the fuel and hot bed
material fed into a high velocity flow of steam at
atmospheric pressure. At the outlet of the dryer the
solids are separated from the steam and fed to the
boiler. The steam will be used for heating purposes.
One first installation was made in Finland 1994 and a
second plant is reported as having been sold to a
Swedish district heating plant.
The capacity of steam dryers is determined by the
heat transport, and thus by the driving temperature
force between the condensing heating steam (which is
the normal heating medium) and the circulating steam.
This means that the pressure of the condensing steam is
crucial to the cost of the dryer. As an example the
capacity of a dryer with an operating pressure of 45
bars is doubled when the pressure of the heating steam
is raised from 12 to 25 bars. This is true for both flash
and fluid bed dryers. The conclusion is that the price
information for a steam dryer must always be related to
both capacity and heating steam pressure. For a flash
dryer with a capacity of 25 tons of water at 25 bars
heating pressure, the price is ca. 4 MUSD while the
fluid bed dryer of the same size delivered to the pulp
mill had a ca. 30% higher price.

4. Environmental aspects
A common problem for all types of biofuel dryers, is
the release of volatile organic compounds, VOC. All
types of wood material contain volatile organic material that may be emitted together with the water vapor.
The compounds must be regarded as harmless in small
concentrations, since they are the same types of constituents that form the fresh forest air. In high concentrations, however, they create problems. Various types
of terpenes are of special concern. In many countries

443

there are legal restrictions to the amounts that may be

released.
Important parameters governing the amounts of
emission are; the source of material, its handling in the
woods and the temperature and residence time of the
material in the dryer. There are principal differences
between flue gas drying and steam drying. In flue gas
drying the VOC are mixed with the inert gases so that
the concentrations are low and it is expensive to treat
the total flow with end of pipe cleaning methods. On
the other side, the material should be at the wet bulb
temperature under most of the drying time in a wellmanaged plant. In a steam drying plant the material
temperature corresponds to the saturation temperature
at the prevailing pressure which is 130150C. The
steam is condensed after the dryer and so are most of
the terpenes. These are only, however, slightly soluble
in water. The terpenes could therefore be decanted
from the water phase and recovered. The inert gases
from the condenser could be incinerated. The soluble
organic compounds will give the condensate a certain
COD value.

5. Operating experiences
The main advantage with rotary dryers is their versatility regarding shape and structure of the processed
solids. The shape and density of the particles determine
the residence time. Small particles spend shorter time in
the dryer than larger and when a particle is dried it
loses density and is transported out of the dryer. The
need for electrical power is moderate due to a comparatively low flow velocity. In order to produce pellets the
material must be disintegrated and the grinding work is
lower for a dry material. The maintenance charges are
normally small.
There has been a considerable increase in outlet
dew-point temperature since our first survey. Today it
is normal to operate at temperatures up to 80C. In this
way the possibilities for heat recovery are increased and
the outlet gas volume is decreased, resulting in lower
costs for gas cleaning. The high outlet dew point is
achieved by recirculation and an inlet temperature of
about 400C. Regarding the VOC emissions the situation is somewhat unclear. In Sweden there is presently
no legislation on gaseous emissions from biofuel dryers.
Potential problems are therefore manifested by subjective observations, i.e. odor problems around the plant.
Serious problems were only reported from one plant
situated rather centrally in a town. In this case gas
scrubbing by water has solved the problem.
Four flash drying plants are still in operation. The
particle size in these dryers is reduced via hammer mills
incorporated in the dryer. The mill, which handles wet
material, and the large pressure drop result in a consid-

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R. Wimmerstedt / Chemical Engineering and Processing 38 (1999) 441447

erably higher electricity consumption compared to rotary dryers. The maintenance charge is normally high
due to erosion problems in bends and cyclones and
exchange of glazing hammers. The emission problems
seem similar to those in rotary dryers.
In the steam flash dryers the shortest distance across
the fuel particle must not exceed 4 5 mm. Particle
lengths up to 30 mm are accepted. A mill is accordingly
needed to disintegrate the wet fuel before the dryer. The
power needed for the most recent plant (capacity 25
tons of water/h at 25 bar) is about 1 MW for the fan
and the screws, which transport the fuel in and out
from the dryer. This is a much lower value than was
achieved with the first installation. The power consumption in the mill is related to the type of fuel used.
The fluid bed dryer is claimed to accept particles,
which have passed a 20 mm strain, calling for disintegration only of big particles. In the dryer installed at
the pulp mill, the fuel had a high content of bark strips
and shives, which passed the strainer causing severe
plugging of the dryer. To solve the problem an extra
crusher had to be installed before the dryer. The fan
power is about 25% lower in the fluid bed dryer compared to the flash dryer.
The maintenance need for the flash dryers is reported
as rather high but the availability has been good. From
the newly installed dryer start up problems have been
reported. These include corrosion and clogging as well
as leakage through the exiting plug screw.
The fluid bed dryers installed 1994 and 1995 have
experienced considerable problems during their first
years of operation. For both plants the capacities of the
ejectors that transport the fine particles had to be
increased to prevent plugging, which results in increased energy consumption. Sensitive parts of the
dryers had to be clad in stainless steel. The most severe
problems have been with the cell feeders. They have
had to be renewed several times, and have at the district
heating plant limited the capacity to about half of the
design value. At that plant the feeding is now achieved
by pulp screws, which are very costly items. The other
plant is still using cell feeders but they have to be
replaced regularly.
The handling of the condensate has caused much
trouble at the district heating plant, which is situated
rather centrally in a town with ca. 100 000 inhabitants.
In the original design, the condensate after flashing and
cooling was discharged to the sewer system. This resulted in terpene release from sinks and cesspools that
gave terpene concentration in the air much higher than
the accepted limit. The situation was improved when
the condensate was transported to the sewage plant in a
specially built, separate duct. Also the terpene separation in the flashing was improved, but there are still
odor problems in the vicinity of the district heating
plant. The COD content was ca. 3 g/l, which was five

times higher than estimated. The condensate also contains phenolic compounds, which inhibit the denitrification process in the sewage plant. Based on these
experiences, it was decided that the condensate at the
pulp mill was discharged to the spill water tanks,
evaporated and burnt together with the black liquor.
This is of course a safe method, but on the other hand
it means a waste of energy.

6. Thermodynamic aspects
To have a low energy use counted as kJ/kg evaporated water in a flue gas dryer, the moisture content in
the exiting gas must be high and the gas must be close
to saturation. This is achieved by using a high inlet gas
temperature and recirculating the drying gas. Today it
is rather common to have exiting dew points of 80C
and a dry bulb temperature of 110C. This results in an
energy use of about 3100 kJ/kg. Energy uses in this
area were also found from the investigated dryers. At
high exiting dew points it is also possible to have a
considerable waste heat recovery for instance to a district heating system.
The steam dryers are operated at super atmospheric
pressure. This results in a temperature level of the waste
heat that makes it interesting for recovery also in an
industrial system. The net energy use of a steam dryer
is normally counted as the gross energy used, reduced
by the recovered energy. The gross energy use is typically 2900 kJ/kg if the leakage losses can be neglected.
The gross energy use is normally an uninteresting value
since the dryer is always supposed to be integrated in a
process as will be discussed later on. The net energy use
is dependent on a number of variables as inlet moisture
content, inlet temperature and the temperature of exciting product condensate [7]. Leakage losses of course
have a high practical impact.
So far only the first law has been taken into consideration. If we also include second law analysis we will get
a complete thermodynamic overview. Second law analysis is especially important under conditions with a high
electricity price compared to fuel price.
In this section an attempt to systematize the dewatering of biofuels is made. Four various cases are identified as discussed below.

Fig. 1. Firing of wet fuel.

R. Wimmerstedt / Chemical Engineering and Processing 38 (1999) 441447

Fig. 2. Drying at a detached fuel factory.

Case 1 is displayed in Fig. 1. It simply means, that

the drying is achieved in the boiler. All of the latent
heat in the steam is discharged with the flue gases,
which typically have a dew-point temperature of 60
65C. A certain amount of the latent heat can be
recovered if a flue gas condenser is installed. This is the
case at quite a few district heating plants in Sweden.
However, the low temperature level calls for a heat sink
of very low temperature, for instance the return water
in a modern district heating system (DHS) or the
installation of a heat pump.
Case 2, Fig. 2, means drying at a fuel factory that is
not colocated with other plants. In this case only flue
gas dryers make sense. The dryer is operated with a
dew point of exiting gas of about 80C. The gas can be
used for material pre-heating in a direct contact equipment. If there is a need for low temperature heat in for
instance a nearby DHS, a considerable part of the
latent heat can be recovered. The elevation of the
dew-point temperature compared to case number 1 is
very important. An assessment of the heat consumption
in one such plant gave a specific heat consumption of
3140 kJ/kg evaporated water. About 80% of the waste
energy could be recovered for district heating but it
must be born in mind that the heating water return
temperature was as low as 50C which is unusual.

445

In case number 3, Fig. 3, a steam dryer is incorporated in a process industry or a district heating plant
with cogeneration of electricity. The use of a steam
dryer means that the waste energy can be recovered at
a high temperature level, which is necessary if it is
going to be used in a process industry or in a DHS at
high temperature level. From a thermodynamic point
of view, the heating steam to the dryer should be bled
from the turbine at as low pressure as possible, to
ensure maximum cogeneration. Since the dryer cost is
very much influenced by the pressure of the heating
steam, and the turbine reconstruction in retrofitting
applications is costly, this does not normally give an
economic optimum. The tendency here is to use as high
a pressure of the heating steam as can be allowed from
operational reasons. The earlier mentioned fluid bed
dryer, which is installed in a district heating plant uses
reduced direct steam from the boiler. The waste heat
from the dryer is mainly used for feed water heating,
which gives more cogenerated electricity than using it
for district heating [7]. The reason for this is that the
cogeneration capacity is controlled by the heat load of
the DHS. If waste heat from the dryer is used in the
DHS the heat load is reduced accordingly.
The installation at the pulp mill is much more exergetically optimized, since it uses steam extracted at 12
bars from the turbine. This is the normal extraction
pressure at a pulp mill, so no reconstruction of the
turbine was needed. The product steam is condensed in
the reboiler of a stripping column, and thus utilized in
the process. This is a typical example of process
integration.
Also the Bed Mixing Dryer could be included in this
case. The heat to the dryer is here supplied directly
from the boiler via the hot bed material. The product
steam is used for heating the district heating water. This

Fig. 3. Steam dryer with heat recovery.

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R. Wimmerstedt / Chemical Engineering and Processing 38 (1999) 441447

Fig. 4. Steam dryer with power recovery.

method means that the entire recovered heat load reduces the basis for cogeneration. The coupling accordingly gets the same function as increasing the coefficient
of efficiency for the boiler.
Case number 4 is displayed in Fig. 4. The flow
scheme principally outlines the layout of the new plant
utilizing a flash steam dryer. A fuel factory is integrated
in a district heating plant with co-generation. The idea
is to maximize the electricity production. The plant has
advanced steam data so a considerable amount of
cogenerated power is produced. The fuel factory is
started when the duration curve drops from the full
load value, and can work with full capacity ca. 4000
h/year. The boiler and cogeneration turbine do accordingly not represent any capital cost since the same
equipment would be used also without the dryer. The
product steam raises fresh steam in a steam reformer.
The fresh steam is expanded to vacuum in a small
condensing turbine.
With normal heat recovery from a steam drying
process the net heat consumption can be calculated
from a heat and mass balance. The result depends
primarily of the inlet material moisture and temperature but is typically 4 600 kJ/kg. In this case we
modeled the plant and came out with the following
result for the specific energy use, Qdryer:
Qdryer = 4450 K1135 kJ/kg evaporated water
K 1135 represents the totally produced electricity
where K is a valence factor indicating the increased
value in electricity compared to heat. K = 3 gives Q=
1180 and K=4 gives Q = 100 indicating that a high
valence factor must be used to thermodynamically justify the coupling.

We also carried out a rough economic estimate which

gave an electricity production cost of ca. 5 USC/kWh.
In the current case the steam to the dryer was extracted
at 26 bar. Since it is a green field plant it would have
meant no extra cost to extract the steam at lower
pressure. An increased dryer cost would have resulted
in an electricity production cost well above the price
above, which supports the earlier conclusion about
using as high a steam pressure as possible for the dryer.
7. Conclusions
The survey clearly indicated that the very well proven
rotary dryer technique had almost completely taken
over the detached fuel factory market. The plants
operate at very high dew points and an increase during
the last 15 years was observed. There are concepts on
the market today, working with almost pure steam
atmosphere, so it might well be anticipated that this
trend continues. Research regarding drying mechanisms
at extremely high dew points would thus be of need.
In factories integrated in process industries and district heating plants, steam dryers operating at above
atmospheric pressures should have their market niche.
The integration could be performed to give optimum
exergetic efficiency. The choice is highly dependent on
the prevailing ratio between fuel and electricity prices.
A high electricity price allows sophisticated couplings
with high exergetic efficiency.
The problems experienced with the steam dryers are
hopefully of teething type. An Achilles heel for both
types of dryers is the feeding and exiting of material
from the pressure chamber. This problem calls for
increased development efforts. Corrosion and erosion
problems also call for development work.

R. Wimmerstedt / Chemical Engineering and Processing 38 (1999) 441447

Problems with VOC emissions have been highlighted

recently and here basic research regarding transport
mechanisms and studies on the dependence of varying
parameter are of importance. It could be foreseen that
long residence times and high temperatures aggravate
the emissions. It is not probable that the problem could
be dealt with only at the source, even if the drying
method could be of importance. Efficient and energy
conserving methods for handling the emissions must
thus also be developed.

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447

Lund University Report, LUTKDH/TKKA-8001 (1998) 1102.

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