Spanish biofuels heating value estimation. Part I: Ultimate analysis data

Due to the great variety of existing potential biomass fuels, measuring their heating value accurately is a previous design requirement, since this is one of the most important parameters regarding the evaluation of competitive energy generation from biomass combustion. In this work, the higher heating value (HHV) of 100 different biomass samples was experimentally determined. The list of biofuels tested includes different kinds of solid densified commercial fuels, forest and agricultural industry residues, woody and herbaceous residues, energetic crops and cereals. Ultimate analysis-based equations were used to develop a correlation between data, in order to quantify the detected dependence of HHV on mainly carbon and oxygen content. A comparative study was carried out between our results and those predicted from theoretical equations found in the bibliography. The wide experimental database enables us to propose new predictive correlations, with departures from experimental values below 6% in all cases, as a contribution to the characterization and normalization of solid biofuels. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.