Electrostatic separation of mineral and vegetal powders with a custom built corona separator: application to biorefinery of rice husk

摘要

In a dry biorefinery scheme, the separation of plant materials into powders rich in the constituents of interest is a crucial step. In recent years, electrostatic separation of agri-resources has sparked a growing interest for its potentialities, but optimization efforts remain to be done especially in case of fine powders. In this study a custom-designed corona-electrostatic separator has been built and its usage for the separation of mineral (ash from rice husk) and vegetal powders (cellulose fibers) with different particle size distributions has been studied. First, the powders have been characterized by their electric charge decay curves and their behaviour on the separator was studied. At a second time, separation tests have been carried out with blends of these two powders, and with native, finely ground, rice husk powder (constituted of both mineral and vegetal particles). In each case, the efficiency of the process was evaluated.