BIOCAT

Clean Air Technology for Biomass Combustion Systems (BioCAT)

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'The BioCAT proposal aims at the development of new generation of biomass based room heating appliances. The EU climate and energy strategy for 2020 obviously relies on a significant increase of biomass share in household energy production. In addition new building standards lead to a decrease in heat consumption of households and consequently to a decrease of the nominal power of heating appliances. Therefore small-scale wood fired room heating appliances are a perfectly suited, absolutely climate friendly and cost effective solution. However it is also known that small-scale wood combustion appliances, in particular logwood fired systems – contribute significant shares of gaseous and particulate emissions all over Europe. The only way to solve this resulting conflict of aims is to reduce emissions from logwood fired small-scale combustion systems significantly and this is exactly the mission of the BioCAT – project. The integration of a new oxidation catalyst system in existing or newly developed biomass combustion appliances will make the developed products defining a new standard in their class concerning gaseous and particulate emissions. The emission targets for the developed manually stoked appliances are in the same range or even better than today’s state-of-the-art automatically fired room heating appliances (pellet stoves). Therefore the expected impacts of the BioCAT project are self-evident: SME partners in the consortium, catalyst system- as well as biomass combustion system manufacturers, will benefit from the technologically outstanding position of their developed products. Positive “side effect” of the expected economic impact is the environmental impact. By reaching a strong market penetration of catalyst equipped combustion systems in the upcoming decade a huge step towards the solution of the air pollution issue of small-scale biomass can be done.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

A recent EU-funded research project has developed new prototype stoves that release significantly less carbon monoxide and particulate matter than traditional wood-burning stoves.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

The EU's 2020 climate and energy strategy partly relies on an increase in the use of biomass for household energy production. Small, wood-fired heaters represent an eco-friendly and cheap solution if researchers can reduce carbon emissions from these combustion systems.

This was the objective of the EU-funded 'Clean air technology for biomass combustion systems (Biocat)' (http://www.biocat.bioenergy2020.eu/ (BIOCAT)) project. It investigated ways to integrate a catalyst into existing or newly developed wood stoves.

When wood burns, it oxidises due to the reaction with oxygen in the air. The use of a catalyst could improve the burning process to the extent that emissions are reduced.

Researchers began by testing various catalytic materials until they found a suitable candidate for integration into small-scale wood stoves. The testing involved simulating the behaviour of a small-scale stove in the laboratory.

Next, the team developed methods to assess and optimise the performance of an integrated catalytic system using their chosen catalyst. They chose five stoves for this purpose in order to reduce emissions and increase the efficiency of individual combustion units.

After these primary optimisation efforts, prototypes were created and tested in independent laboratories. Several of the prototypes achieved project targets for reduced emissions.

The BIOCAT project has thus produced a number of new heating appliances with little or no carbon emissions. The project's approach seems to be a promising technological solution to the problem of carbon emissions.