Selected biofuels characterization results and quality assessment report

Initially, samples of the selected commercial solid biofuels will be collected in the different countries (maximum five non SUDOE countries for olive stones and dried fruit shells and seven countries for the rest of selected biofuels) by the corresponding national partners (AVEBIOM and CIEMAT will do this task jointly in Spain) and sent to the participant laboratories, according to the pre established samples distribution protocol. A total of at least ten samples of each biofuel will be collected per country. The samples will consist of biofuels in the market from different producers or, in the case sufficient different producers are not available, samples of the same producer but collected at different times (different production lots) will be considered. All the samples will be analysed, according to the corresponding EN (ISO) standard methods: humidity, ash and volatiles contents, elemental (C,H,N) analysis, chlorine and sulphur contents, calorific value, ash components (micro and micro elements) and ash melting point (CEN/TS 15370-1). Moreover, the CIEMAT will determine the sintering behaviour of all the samples according to a specially developed in- house method. This method is based on the determination of the fraction of biomass ashes preheated to 550°C under oxidising conditions which remains on a 0.25 mm sieve after specific sieving conditions. The ashes are previously produced by ashing the selected fuels in air atmosphere at different temperatures from 800º C to 1,400º C, with a heating slope of 3ºC/h. Aquality assessment for each biofuel will be then delivered by CIEMAT, according the results obtained in the described tests.