A study on combustion characteristics of wood biomass for cogeneration plant

In this work, various wood biomasses were used to determine the combustion characteristics for the fuel of cogeneration plant. Combustion characteristics of four types, i.e., (i) forest products, (ii) recycled wood, (iii) empty fruit bunch, and (iv) palm kernel shell, were examined via thermal gravimetric analyzer (TGA) in air atmosphere and coal was used as a comparison group. From the TGA results, the combustion of the wood biomass was occurred in the range of 280 to 420 °C, which was lower than that of coal. Forest product showed the lowest activation energy (0.4 kJ/mol) compared to that of other wood biomasses (about 6 to 14 kJ/mol) and coal (64 kJ/mol). In addition, the reaction rate constant of the wood biomass was lower than that of coal. These results indicate the higher combustion initiation rate of wood biomass due to the high content of volatile matter, which had a low boiling point.