Abstract
In a dry bioreffinery scheme, the separation of plant materials into fractions of interest compound is a crucialstep. In recent years, electrostatic separation of agri-resources has sparked a growing interest for its potentialbut optimization efforts remain to be done especially in case of fine powders. The present work is anexperimental investigation of factors, which influence the separation process of plant biomass powders in acustom built corona electrostatic separator with view to optimization. Three particle size classes of cork,semolina and wood powders have been characterized in term of charge decay curves and their behavior on thedevice have been studied. Separation tests of a blend constituted of 1g of wood powder and 1g of semolinahave also been conducted with very promising results.