The dehydration and odor treatment of fusel and its applications for instant light charcoal briquettes

This work aims to explore the use of an alternative to petroleum for ignition of charcoal briquettes. Fusel was chosen for this study as it is a low cost by-product of bioethanol production and has a high concentration of long chain alcohols as an ignition source. Fusel was first dehydrated using crude glycerin, a waste product of biodiesel production, to lower water content below three percent. Next odor treatments were employed to remove the distinct odor of fusel, likely caused by the presence of butyric acid. Among the treatments were active carbon and transesterification of butyric acid. For the charcoal briquettes, factors such a loading and evaporation were considered among three different briquette types. Once the briquette and loading procedure were finalized, bagging test were conducted in the context of a heat sealed single and multiple use bag. Both were successful at atmosphere exposure times under one hour.