Kaur, Baldeep ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1762-3058, Puppala, Venkata Sai Chinmayi, Sharma, Atul ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6756-4148 and Bradley, Michael (2025) A practical approach to determine self-heating tendencies in biomass stored in bulk quantities. In: The 3rd FERIA Conference, the European Conference on Fuel and Energy Research and Its Applications, 10th - 12th September, 2025, University of Leeds.

PDF (Author's Accepted Extended Abstract) 52465 KAUR_ A_Practical_Approach_To_Determine_Self-Heating_Tendencies_In_Biomass_Stored_In_Bulk_Quantities_(AAM)_2025.pdf - Accepted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (47kB) | Request a copy

Abstract

Biomass is one of the key contributors to renewable energy production in the UK and Europe, and its use is growing rapidly worldwide. However, large biomass stores regularly experience fires due to self-heating, leading to significant financial losses (often £millions per event), pollution and risks to life. Such types of fires are more common than anticipated and experience shows that plant owners need to consider this problem on the basis of when it will happen, rather than if. Ventilation is a commonly used technique in the USA, intended to reduce the reactivity in freshly manufactured pellets; there is a common belief that it may help to reduce the reactants present, the common belief being that ventilation will increase the speed of reaction and therefore the rate of self-heating. However, UK and European storage and handling facilities do not ventilate the biomass pellet fuel. Clearly, given these contrary views there are good reasons to explore the role and effectiveness of ventilation to minimise self-heating in biomass pellets. Past experiences in developing various tests for characterising bulk solids have demonstrated that testing and prediction of behaviour based on chemistry and nominal physical specifications (e.g. particle size) fails to accurately represent behaviour of particles in a bulk form. This is because of the near-infinite variations in physical form including particle shape, fines content, durability, surface texture, homogeneity, wood species, ageing etc., all of which affect the behaviour, but that cannot be entirely captured by basic chemical analysis. Thus, any reliable measurement must involve testing small samples of the actual bulk solid in its real form as present in the system, including effects of particle breakage, segregation, environmental effects etc. This research examines the effect of pellet ageing on availability of reactive substances, the markers during off-gassing to indicate ageing, measures to remove reactants and explore the availability of reactants. Off-gassing: Experimental work focused on measuring the trend of gases released during the ageing process of biomass samples during storage under controlled environmental conditions. The aim was to develop a quick laboratory-based method for off-gassing analysis using small quantities of representative biomass samples. These measurements can be conducted simultaneously on multiple samples and accelerated by the elevated temperature and relative humidity conditions. Interestingly, this approach can be applied to range of biomass and waste materials to understand the relationship between the ageing, environmental conditions, off-gassing and self-heating.

Item Type:	Conference or Conference Paper (Lecture)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	biomass, biomass storage and handling; self-heating.
Subjects:	Q Science > Q Science (General) T Technology > T Technology (General) T Technology > TP Chemical technology
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Engineering & Science Faculty of Engineering & Science > School of Engineering (ENG) Faculty of Engineering & Science > Wolfson Centre for Bulk Solids Handling Technology
Related URLs:	Organisation
Last Modified:	12 Feb 2026 15:23
URI:	https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/52465

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