Before plant material can be turned into biofuel to power things like giant jets and high-speed motorcycles, a significant amount of water must be removed. This often requires both mechanical compaction and thermal drying. Japanese researchers have figured out how to eliminate the heat part of the process, extracting a water-soluble antiviral compound from cedar and ginger, turning the plant into a clean and efficient fuel.
To create a process that extracts moisture from plants to the extent that heat drying is unnecessary, researchers at Okayama University in Japan created a rolling compactor. Then I gave them cedar wood planks, cedar chips, and ginger, which is known as a type of ginger. alpinia zermbet through the press. All three dehydrated materials were pelletized and burned to assess how effectively they acted as fuels.
Scientists have found that cedar wood boards and ginger plants compress better than wood chips. This indicates that the internal structure of the plant material is arranged in a structured way rather than the more chaotic way found in wood chips. please think about it. You can extract more from a straight, hollow tube than from a tube with various intersecting channels.
They also found that pellets made from cedar wood planks yielded higher heat values than ginger plants when burned. Ginger burned at approximately 95% of the standard, although it burned at a level consistent with the standard set by the International Standards Organization (ISO). (ISO is an international group that sets standards across a wide range of industries.)
“Our method does not require time, stockyards, or additional heat drying, so it is field-operable. Professor, Department of Pathology and Experimental Medicine, Okayama University.” Being able to compress both will facilitate biomass power generation using local plants, and these properties will help increase the sustainability of the region.”
In addition, the ginger plant produced the most water-soluble lignin, although its combustion efficiency was suboptimal. This compound has long been an offshoot of the wood pulp and paper industry and has received increasing attention for its potential applications. It also includes uses as an antiviral agent.
A 2021 study showed that heat drying of plant material can adversely affect the water solubility of lignin. This is one of the reasons why new methods of drying plants without heat are promising. This is because water solubility can expand the use of substances. In a Japanese study, lignin extracted from both the ginger plant and, to a lesser extent, cedar chips, effectively inhibited the activity of viruses that cause influenza and swine epidemic diarrhea. , lignin-based coatings have been shown to be effective in defeating herpes simplex virus type 2 and HIV.
“The chemically unextracted water-soluble lignin obtained by this method has potential applications in the fields of medicine, cosmetics and animal husbandry.
This research Journal of Material Cycles and Waste Management.
Source: via EurekAlert, Okayama University
