Explosion characteristics of pulverised Colombian coal, pine wood and their mixtures

Co-firing of coal and biomass is a readily implementable, cost effective option of introducing biomass into the European power generation capability. Pulverised coal and biomass can be blended in various proportions and used as fuels in co-firing plants with a subsequent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Coal powders have well known explosion hazards and the explosion characteristics for many coals are available in the literature [1], however, data for biomass explosibility are scarcer due to some characteristics of biomass that prevent their characterisation using the existing standard methods [2]. The explosibility of coal/biomass blends is also unknown. The aim of the present work is to provide explosion characteristics and combustion properties such as flame speeds and burning velocities of coal and biomass blends and compare their reactivity to that of coal and biomass alone.