Investigation of the combustion characteristics of mixtures of five different wood materials with local lignite

While fossil fuels account for 90% of total primary energy consumption in Turkey, 80% of fossil fuel consumption is met through imports. This amount, which is a clear indicator of Turkey's external dependence in terms of energy, can be reduced by utilizing local resources. Therefore, the utilization of waste wood material, which is one of the available renewable energy sources, in existing thermochemical systems will reduce the country's external dependence on energy and reduce CO2 emissions, one of the most important greenhouse gases. In this study aim to determine five different wood processing wastes (red pine wood and four chemically processed wood products: wooden window frames, wooden parquet, and two different furniture wastes made of MDF) were mixed with two different domestic lignites (Tunçbilek and Soma Lignite) in varying weight ratios, and the combustion behavior of the prepared fuel mixtures was investigated using thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). A total of 90 biomass/lignite mixtures were prepared, along with 21 raw lignite and raw biomass samples without mixing, resulting in 111 TGA analyses in total. The results showed that waste wood biomass has lower ignition and final combustion temperatures compared to lignite coals. Untreated raw wood exhibited higher reactivity than processed wood waste. As the lignite ratio in the fuel mixtures increased, the ignition and final combustion temperatures generally rose, while the total combustion reactivity decreased. In other words, mixtures with a high lignite content ignited later and burned more slowly. The comprehensive combustion, flammability, ignition, and burnout indices of the fuel mixtures increased with the addition of biomass to lignite.Thus, it was observed that blending biomass with lignite improves the combustion and ignition performance of lignite.