Prediction of the heats of combustion of plant raw materials based on the elemental analysis data

Abstract

The relationships of the data of proximate (moisture content, ash content, yield of volatile matter, and nonvolatile carbon content) and elemental (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur, and oxygen contents) analyses of various plant raw materials for the production of biogas, charcoal, and torrefied biomass with their gross calorific values were analyzed. Mathematical relationships were developed for predicting the gross calorific values of plant raw materials with high accuracy based on the carbon and oxygen contents and atomic ratios between carbon and oxygen.