Low-Quality Fuels for Small-Scale Combustion Boilers: An Experimental Study

This work foaises on the combustion performance of cheap low-quality fuels as an alternative to existing pellets and chips for small-scale combustion. The market is keen on using locally available fuels, but a lack of information on their performance in boilers and legislation has prevented wider use. The approval of the regulation that implements Directive 2009/1125/EC regarding ecodesign requirements for solid fuel boilers proposes even tighter requirements beyond 2018, as compared to class 5 in EN303-5:2012, and mainly gives More relative importance to the partial loads. Our study analyzes woody chip industry residues, agricultural residues, logging forest residues, agricultural pellet residues, and shells and stones from agricultural industry residues at nominal and especially at partial load. Two commercial boilers have been representatively chosen for the state-of-the-art top-fed and bottom-fed boilers.