Heating and emission properties of waste biomass in burner furnace

Abstract

Utilization of waste suitable as a fuel for small combustion devices is a very important issue. Therefore, this article analyzes selected waste materials from agriculture and maintenance of municipal vegetation. The pellet samples from composting had very high ash content (22.39 and 36.85% wt.), which resulted in low values of net calorific value (12.66 and 10.24 MJ/kg), but also in bad properties of these samples in high concentration of harmful emission. Other problematic fuel samples were pellets from maintenance of city vegetation and reed canary grass, for which high concentration of carbon monoxide was measured during combustion process. The device used for these experiments is based on burner furnace. Combustion conditions could be improved by more uniform fuel supply to the burner and better control of combustion air. Boiler with advanced combustion control can reach better results during combustion process. Results in this article are valid for tested materials combusted in simple pellet burner with limited ability to control combustion process.