Experimental Study of the Combustion of a Single Biomass Particle
Résumé
Biomass valorization for energy production is considered as one of the best ways to overcome the petroleum’s depletion, move forward in the environmental protection concerns, but also to provide the energetic request. The combustion of biomass is an efficient valorization pathway but it still requires fundamental knowledge. To go deeper, some authors use simulation analysis combined with experimental results where a good agreement is appreciated. In the same sense, the present study explores experimentally the combustion of a single biomass particle as woody pellets and wood. An experimental free-ventilated system is built with a cone calorimeter as radiative heat source in order to heat the particles. A weighing scale is used to measure mass degradation during combustion process, and a type-k thermocouple allows measuring the temperature evolution in the center of the particle. As a result, curves of temporal evolution of mass degradation and central temperature are acquired for each kind of particle. This allows to observe the three main phases of combustion process (particle drying, volatiles combustion, and char’s combustion), besides a superposition of homogeneous and heterogeneous combustions phases. Considering that the elemental composition of woody pellet and wood particles are close, similar combustion phases are identified with different time steps.