Determination of the specific heat of biomass materials and the combustion energy of coke by DSC analysis

The accurate determination of the thermal properties of biomass materials is particularly important when studying biomass combustion processes. This paper reports a method for the determination of the maximum sampling error and the confidence intervals of thermal properties obtained from TG–DSC analysis. Special care must be taken with the sampling procedure to achieve an acceptable degree of error and low statistical uncertainty. The obtained levels of uncertainty and error demonstrate that the properties evaluated by the analysis were representative of the fuels. A study of the trends and time correlations was performed to ensure that the observed correlations arise from completely random causes. The obtained results are particularly interesting for biomass energy applications.

► Determination of thermal properties of biomass is important in combustion processes.
► Biomass is very heterogeneous so a good sampling procedure is essential.
► Sampling errors and confidence intervals of thermal properties are obtained.
► TG/DSC analysis is employed to process the samples.
► The properties evaluated are representative of the fuels analyzed.