Advances in Environmental Biology, 9(15) Special 2015, Pages: 34-40 AENSI Journals Advances in Environmental Biology ISSN-1995-0756 EISSN-1998-1066 Journal home page: http://www.aensiweb.com/AEB/ Corresponding Author: Noorfidza Y Harun, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Department of Chemical Engineering, 32610 Bandar Seri Iskandar, Perak, Malaysia. Combustion Behavior and Thermal Analysis of Agricultural And Woody Biomass Blends 1 Noorfidza Y Harun and 2 Muhammad T Afzal 1 Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Department of Chemical Engineering, 32610 Bandar Seri Iskandar, Perak, Malaysia. 2 University of New Brunswick, Department of Mechanical Engineering, 15 Dineen Drive, E3B 5A3 Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada. ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history: Received 6 June 2015 Accepted 19 July 2015 Available online 1 August 2015 Keywords: Biomass blends, agricultural biomass, combustion characteristics, biomass energy capacity, TGA, DSC Background: Blended biomass, a new feedstock for pellets production potentially be viable to support the demand for wood pellets at present and in the future. Combustion behavior and characteristics tests were carried out in thermogravimetry (TG) analyzer with an air flow rate of 100 ml/min and heating rate of 20 °C/min. Heat flow and heat required for the biomass reaction was measured using differential scanning calorimeter (DSC). Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the combustion behaviour and thermal properties of both individual and blend agricultural (reed canary grass, timothy hay and switchgrass) and forestry biomass (spruce and pine). Results: The TG results showed that the combustion behavior of all the biomass samples including the blends were almost similar. Two main stages of combustion reaction were presented by differential thermal analysis (DTA) curve. The heat released from the blended biomass (6.94 – 9.26 kJ/kg) was higher than the individual agricultural biomass (4.59 – 6.78 kJ/kg) but lower than individual spruce (10.2kJ/kg) and pine (11.13kJ/kg). Conclusion: The findings indicate that the reactivity of the individual agricultural biomass material changed due to blending. Overall, blending can help to increase the energy capacity and can improve the combustion characteristics. © 2015 AENSI Publisher All rights reserved. To Cite This Article: Noorfidza Y Harun and Muhammad T Afzal., Combustion behavior and thermal analysis of agricultural and woody biomass blends. Adv. Environ. Biol., 9(15), 34-40, 2015 INTRODUCTION Global wood pellet demand is expanding rapidly and consumers, businesses and regulators are looking for alternatives to fossil fuels [1]. Currently, pellet industries rely heavily on forestry biomass, which could face threat from biomass power station in the near future. Wood pellet demand is projected to grow from 23 million tons from year 2014 to 50 million tons in year 2024 [1]. This means new feedstock resources have to be exploited in order to support the future demand. Therefore, pellet industry is now looking for alternate biomass resources to increase the pellet production. Canada as one of the main producers of pellets has increased the pellets fuel export by 25 percent every year [2]. Wood and agricultural residues account about 42% of the total Canadian biomass [3]. About 25 Mtoe (Megatonne of oil equivalent) of agricultural residues is generated annually in Canada [4]. Furthermore, agricultural biomass has been highly recommended by industries as a feedstock for making pellet [5, 6 and 7]. This would help to increase the production of pellets and obviously can fill the demand. Generally, pellets made from agricultural biomass show poor combustion behavior due to the chemical components specifically the inorganic components as compared to woody biomass. Other than the combustion behavior, the inorganic mineral contents also affect the thermal characteristics and emissions. For instance, Werther et al. [8] reported that some agricultural residues have high alkali oxides and salts, which may lead to various problems during combustion due to their low melting points. Few others have also reported the ash related problem due to inorganic matters such as potassium, chlorine and sodium in the biomass during combustion [9 and 10]. According to Demirbas [11]:  The high moisture and ash contents in biomass fuels can cause ignition and combustion problems.  The melting point of the ash is usually low and it causes fouling and slagging problems.  And due to the above problems it was anticipated that blending biomass with higher quality coal will reduce flame stability problems, as well as minimize corrosion effects.