Kaur, Baldeep ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1762-3058 and Bradley, Michael (2025) A novel approach to detect self-heating in large biomass stores. In: The 4th “Silo Fires” Conference 2025, 10th June, 2025, University of Greenwich, London.

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Abstract

Biomass is one of the main contributors to produce renewable energy for UK and Europe and is growing rapidly in many other countries. However it regularly encounters fires arising in large stores due to self-heating, which cause high financial loss (£ millions per event), pollution and danger to life. Such types of fires are more common than anticipated. Past experience with developing many tests for characterisation of bulk solids has taught us that modelling and testing based on chemistry and nominal physical specifications (e.g. particle size) cannot give a good representation of the behaviour or particles in a bulk form. This is because there is an almost infinite variety of variation in physical form including particle shape, fines content, durability, surface texture, homogeneity etc, all of which affect the behaviour, but that cannot be captured by analysis. Therefore, any successful measurement must of necessity involve the use of a small sample of the “real” bulk solid in its form as present in the system, including effects of particle breakage, segregation etc. This research explores 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. Ventilation is a most commonly used technique to reduce the reactivity in freshly manufactured pellets, possibly to reduce the reactant. However, European storage and handling facilities does not ventilate the biomass pellet fuel. There is a possibility to explore the scientific reasons to explore the possibility of ventilation to minimise the self-heating in biomass pellets.

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
Last Modified:	12 Feb 2026 15:56
URI:	https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/52468

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