MAIZE COB AND CEREAL CHAFF: FEEDSTOCKS FOR ENERGY PRODUCTION

Many EU projects affirm that there is significant potential to expand the share of energy & material production from biomass in a 2020-2030 timeframe in a sustainable way and without entering into conflict with food and feed security. Furthermore, all studies agree about the necessity to unlock the potential of underutilized agricultural resources to reach the planned European bio-economy goals. Agricultural residues like maize cob and grain chaff with an annual European availability of 9.6 Mt and 54.8 Mt respectively, represent an interesting underutilized amount of potential biomass for energy production. Moreover, the harvesting logistics of cob and chaff grain are supported by equipment already available in the market. Cob and chaff are used in different industrial fields but few studies have analyzed the potential as feedstock for industrial boilers to produce energy, separately or in combination with other biomass types. This is a preliminary study to investigate the physical and chemical characteristics of chaff grain and maize cob in order to verify their potential use in industrial boilers for the production of heat and electricity. Moisture and ash contents, ash melting point, heating value, and concentrations of C, H, N, S of cob and chaff were analyzed in order to evaluate the potential behavior as solid biofuel either as direct utilization or by mixing them with other biomass types.