Studies on combustion behaviours of single biomass particles using a visualization method

Combustion behaviours of single particles (125-150 μm) of eucalyptus, pine and olive residue were investigated by means of a transparent visual drop-tube furnace, electrically heated to 1073 K, and a high-speed camera coupling with a long distance microscope. All three types of biomass samples were found to have two evident combustion phases, i.e., volatile combustion in an envelope flame and subsequent char combustion with high luminance. Yet, due to differences in chemical compositions and properties, their combustion behaviours were also seen somewhat discrepant. The volatile flame of the olive residue was fainter than that of pine and eucalyptus due to its high ash mass fraction. During the char combustion phase, fragmentation took place for most pine particles but only for a few particles of olive residue and eucalyptus. For all three types of biomass samples, the flame size and the average luminous intensity profiles were deduced from the captured combustion video images whilst the combustion burnout times of the volatile matter and char were also calculated and estimated. There were two peak values clearly shown on the profiles of both the flame size and the average luminous intensity during the volatile combustion process of pine and eucalyptus particles, which, according to literature, could not be observed by optical pyrometry. The observed peaks correspond to the devolatilisation of hemicellulose and cellulose. The ratio between the estimated char burnout time and volatile combustion time increases quadratically with the fixed carbon to volatile matter mass ratio, confirming char combustion is much slower than volatile combustion.