Use of the control chart to monitor biomasses quality in power plants

In the last years the biomass market for energy production grew quickly as a consequence of the European policy in this sector. In order to satisfy this growing demand, various type of raw materials can be used as solid biofuel. In this context, power plants need to develop new methodologies to check the biomass quality and reduce the risk of failures. The Biomass Lab of the Polytechnic University of Marche has applied a method named “control chart” to perform the control of some characteristics of the biomass fuels (moisture content, ash content, gross calorific value, element analysis, sulphur, clorine and mineral elements content). The method and its application to a specific case are described. The obtained results show the possibility of improving the quality of solid biofuels used in biomass plants. In fact, is possible to reduce the variability of all parameters by over 50% and to limit up to 40% the average values of some chemical elements, in particular heavy metals, and up to 20% the ash content.