{"id":773,"date":"2016-05-01T20:43:54","date_gmt":"2016-05-02T00:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/cwcallah\/?p=773"},"modified":"2018-09-08T08:19:33","modified_gmt":"2018-09-08T12:19:33","slug":"grass-and-ag-biomass-competitive-with-wood-chips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/cwcallah\/2016\/05\/01\/grass-and-ag-biomass-competitive-with-wood-chips\/","title":{"rendered":"Grass and “Ag Biomass” Competitive with Wood Chips"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chris<\/a>
Chris Davis (Meach Cove Trust) prepares the boiler and combustion testing equipment for a trial run of the new fuel.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Recent testing <\/a>at the Meach Cove Trust<\/a> has demonstrated strong economic and technical feasibility of grass-based biomass combustion fuels.\u00a0 The use of solid, densified, cellulosic biomass fuels has been well demonstrated with wood pellets in residential and light commercial systems and wood chips in larger, often centralized systems.\u00a0 The Grass Energy Partnership of the Vermont Bioenergy Initiative<\/a> has been exploring an alternative form of fuel; grasses densified in a specially developed processor to take the form of 1.5\u201d-2.0\u201d round cylindrical pucks.\u00a0 Grass fuels may be produced on otherwise marginal agricultural land, sometimes in perennial production and even in buffer strips offering environmental benefit.\u00a0 Additionally, fuel can be made by densifying agricultural residue or biomass harvested from idle pasture or fields.\u00a0 We have referred to this fuel as \u201cAg Biomass\u201d. The testing summarized in this report has demonstrated the technical and economic feasibility of such fuels.<\/p>\n

Earlier tests were done using pellets of various feedstocks (mulch hay, reed canary grass, and switch grass) and combinations of feedstocks (mixed with wood) (Sherman, 2011<\/a>). This testing was done in a Solagen boiler (500,000 BTU\/hr) designed for wood pellets.\u00a0 The primary findings of this work confirmed reasonable heating value of the fuels, relatively high ash content of the grass fuels (4.3-6.7%), different combustion air and mixing requirements of the fuel with potential for fusion (clinkers), and relatively high levels of chlorine in the grass fuels which is suspected to accelerate corrosion of internal appliance surfaces.\u00a0 This report also noted that the challenges associated with high ash content and clinker formation could be alleviated with appliance design considerations such as automated ash removal and a moving floor or cleanout cycle. Detailed emissions profiling was also conducted as part of this prior work.<\/p>\n