Antioxidants as additives in wood pellets as a mean to reduce off-gassing and risk for self-heating during storage

Spontaneous self-heating and off-gassing of wood pellets during storage is well-recognized problem. The reason for the phenomena is be autoxidation of fatty/resin acids in the pellets material. Two antioxidants, TBHQ (tert-Butylhydroquinone) and PG (propyl gallate), have been used as additives during pellets production in order to investigate how effective these antioxidants are in blocking autoxidation. Off-gassing of volatile aldehydes, CO and CO2 from wood-pellets and depletion of O2 during storage at room temperature in two different scales of closed storage systems were investigated and antioxidant fortified pellet batches and a reference batch without additive were compared. The results show that TBHQ is an efficient antioxidant at a low concentration (0.5%) in blocking autoxidation of fatty/resin acids in wood pellets. The CO emissions are reduced between 72 and 90% depending on the pellets temperature. Some of the fatty acids are almost intact in the samples with TBHQ compared to reference sample; showing that TBHQ blocking degradation by autoxidation of those fatty acids. For PG, autoxidation has not been blocked. The total amount of emitted aldehydes are 77% less than in pellets made with antioxidants as compared to the reference pellets, showing that TBHQ is acting as inhibitor in the autoxidation processes.