The prediction of elemental composition of biomass based on proximate analysis

Elemental composition is one of the most important properties for biomass utilization. The experimental determination of ultimate analysis data require special instrumentation, while proximate analysis data can be obtained easily by using common equipments. This paper presents new correlations for calculating the elemental composition based on proximate analysis of biomass. The correlations with the effect of ash content taken into account are derived by using 66 data points, and validated by using 20 data points selected from different categories of biomass than that for correlations derivation. The correlations are given as: C = 0.635FC + 0.460VM − 0.095ASH, H = 0.059FC + 0.060VM + 0.010ASH, O = 0.340FC + 0.469VM − 0.023ASH, where 9.2% ⩽ FC ⩽ 32.79%, 57.2% ⩽ VM ⩽ 90.6%, 0.1% ⩽ ASH ⩽ 24.6%, 36.2% ⩽ C ⩽ 53.1%, 4.7% ⩽ H ⩽ 6.61%, and 31.37% ⩽ O ⩽ 48.0% in wt.% on dry basis. The average absolute errors of these correlations are 3.17%, 4.47% and 3.16%, and the average bias errors are 0.19%, −0.34% and 0.19% compared with measured values of C, H and O, respectively. The new developed correlations can be used to compute elemental composition of biomass accurately, especially for those biomass whose ash content are high, based on simple proximate analysis.