Studying the ash behaviour of agricultural residues using thermal analysis

In this paper, the ash behaviour of some typical Mediterranean agricultural residues, such as peach stones, cotton gin wastes and grape residues is studied via simultaneous, (DTA/TG), thermal analysis methods. Furthermore, the effect of various pre-treatment techniques, such as fractionation and leaching, on the ash behaviour of the specific residues is also studied. Fractionation improves some of the main biomass properties such as calorific value, volatiles and ash content but deteriorates significantly the ash chemical composition of the remaining ash fraction. Leaching improves both the main properties of the treated biomass samples and the chemical composition of the remaining ash fraction, while the combination of the two pre-treatment methods results in a merge of their main advantages leading to an even larger improvement of the ash thermal behaviour. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.