Evaluation and Cause Investigation of Various Solid Biomass Materials Using Thermal Flow Measurement and Gas Emission Test

Recent proposed various biomass fuels are reviewed from safety aspects. Many biomass materials are proposed to use as fuel, such as RDF (=Refuse derived fuel), wood chip. And these fuels have high energy and possibility to make fires, explosion or other incidents. We experienced many incidents of biomass materials, such as biomass fuel, rubble produced from destroyed houses by the great earthquake in March 2011, in Japan. Rubble includes various organic materials, and sometimes causes fire, which is used for fuel of power plants. It is very difficult to extinguish fire of biomass fuel in storage facilities. Here current studies on heat generation for these materials and proposed an evaluation test method for these new developing materials in Japan are introduced, which is to use high sensitive calorimeters such as C80, MS80, or TAM, and gas emission test. And cause investigation work for post-earthquake fires by rubble, conducted by author is introduced. High sensitive calorimeters can detect small heat generation between room temperature and 80 ℃, due to fermentation or other causes. This heat generation sometimes initiated a real fire, and produced some combustible gas, which may explode if fuel is stored inside silo or indoor storage.