Combustion
The burning of wood is currently the largest use of energy derived from a solid fuel biomass. Wood fuel may be available as firewood (e.g. logs, bolts, blocks), charcoal, chips, sheets, pellets and sawdust. Wood fuel can be used for cooking and heating through stoves and fireplaces, and occasionally for fueling steam engines and steam turbines that generate electricity. From many centuries many types of traditional ovens were used in order to benefit from the heat generated by wood combustion. Now, more efficient and clean solutions have been developed: advanced fireplaces (with heat exchangers), wood-fired ovens, wood-burning stoves and pellet stoves, that are able to filter and separate pollutants (centrifuging ashes with rotative filters), thus eliminating many emissions, also allowing to recover a higher quantity of heat that escaped with the chimney fumes.
Mean energy density of Wood, was calculated at around 6–17 Megajoule/Kilogram, depending on species and moisture content.
Combustion of wood is, however, linked to the production of micro-environmental pollutants, as carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO) (an invisible gas able to provoke irreversible saturation of blood's hemoglobine), as well as nanoparticles.
In Italy poplar has been proposed as a tree cultivated to be transformed into biofuels, because of the excellent ratio of energy extracted from its wood because of poplar's fast growing and capture of atmospheric carbon dioxide to the small amount of energy needed to cultivate, cut and transport the trees. Populus euroamericana clone "I-214", grows so fast that is able to reach 14 inches (36 cm) in diameter and heights of 100 feet (30 m) in ten years.
Read more about this topic: Wood Economy
Famous quotes containing the word combustion:
“Him the Almighty Power
Hurld headlong flaming from th’ Ethereal Skie
With hideous ruine and combustion down
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell
In Adamantine Chains and penal Fire,
Who durst defie th’ Omnipotent to Arms.
Nine times the Space that measures Day and Night
To mortal men, he with his horrid crew
Lay vanquisht, rowling in the fiery Gulfe”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“The night has been unruly. Where we lay,
Our chimneys were blown down, and, as they say,
Lamentings heard i’ th’ air, strange screams of death,
And prophesying with accents terrible
Of dire combustion and confused events,
New-hatched to the woeful time.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)