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Abstract
This paper investigates the thermal behavior of woody biomass waste—demolition wood of Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica) and insect-attacked forest residue of Japanese red pine (Pinus densiflora)—using proximate analyses, thermogravimetry (TG), and differential thermal analysis (DTA), with comparison to virgin wood. For the pine samples, there was no significant difference in thermal behavior or elemental composition between the virgin pine and pine that had been damaged by insects, indicating that insect-damaged pine received here can be treated as virgin pine in terms of energy utilization. The cedar demolition wood used here was partly degraded by termites or fungi. Its degraded part had a lower weight loss rate under nitrogen and a broader exothermic peak in the char combustion stage under air than cedar virgin wood. The changes in the relative levels of the chemical components and the resultant chemical changes that occur upon fungal degradation might complicate char formation.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Mr. Takashi Nomura of the Fukui Prefectural Green Center for helping with the DTA measurements. We would also like to thank Dr. Osamu Yamada of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology for performing the elemental analysis of the samples, and Dr. Toshihiro Aramaki of Nippon Steel Kankyo Engineering for measuring the calorific values of the samples.