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Agropellets are presented as a suitable product to be produced in certain agro-industries which could become Integrated Biomass Logistic Centres (IBLC) by taking advantage of its current resources during those periods in which their facilities are underused. Wheat straw and maize stalk were selected to be blended with forestry wood in an agro-industry dedicated to animal feed production. The materials were characterized to assess the quality of the input material. Taking into account the former, different pellets (blends of woody and herbaceous biomass) were produced and tested in a fixed bed reactor in order to study their combustion behaviour. Additionally, several predictive indexes were also calculated to assess sintering and deposition occurrence probability. Ash sintering degree was found to be directly related to composition and highly dependent on Si content. Moreover, an increase of the wood content in the blend did not proportionally imply a higher quality of the final blend, as would be expected. Regarding deposition, due to the high number of factors involved in this phenomenon, it has not been possible to draw clear conclusions. To do this, it was necessary to delve into the deposition mechanisms, which is addressed in the second part of this paper. Thus, despite the appearance of sintering and deposition phenomena, the combustion behaviour was satisfactory in the test carried out. Additionally, it has been demonstrated that agro-industries can act as IBLCs, producing blended pellet for the energy market that aligns with the standard ISO 17225-6. Full article

A big amount of agricultural residues are generated from crop production and partially remain in the field after harvest. Removing the excess of residues after crop harvesting can increase farmer income, providing feedstock that could be used for industrial and energy purposes. The costs for collection and transport of straw and stalks are site- and region-specific and depend on the availability of agricultural residue and on how much of the residue is removed from any specific field or location. If the biomass is baled then it is required to upload the bales on a trailer, transport and unload all the baled biomass to the storage center. On the other hand, if a self-loading wagon is used the loose biomass collected, it must be unloaded every time the wagon is completely full. The distance and the harvesting system used influence the costs and should be analytically studied to avoid turning a possible profit into a disadvantageous business. The research represents a real case study to evaluate, which is the maximum distance to the biomass logistic center from which it is more economically convenient to gather the wheat and corn residues in bales instead of using a self-loading wagon. The results show a lower harvesting unitary cost for the self-loading forage wagon respect to the baling system. Although the study showed delivery distances over 11.4 km for wheat straw and 16.0 km for maize stalks, the use of the self-loading forage wagon is no longer convenient, and baling is the preferred harvesting system. Full article