Experimental Investigation on Combustion and Emission Characteristics of Wheat Before and After Mildew

ABSTRACT

Biomass Fuel (BF) is a new clean fuel which widely used as an alternative to fossil fuel. In this work, moldy wheat (MW) and normal wheat (NW) are investigated to analyze the influences of mildew on combustion and emission characteristics of wheat. Cone calorimeter results confirm that the fire performance index (FPI) of MW is lower than that of NW and the fire growth index (FGI) of MW has an opposite trend. Smoldering investigation shows MW tends to be self-sustained and easily transfers to flame. It is observed from steady-state tube furnace (SSTF) results that MW has higher smoke toxicity risk. Meanwhile, the smoke toxicity of wheat increases with sample mass and decreases with primary air intake. Besides, main flammable or toxic pyrolysis products, 2-methoxyisopropyl cyanoacetate, furan derivatives, and pentanal, are observed in both NW and MW (higher state) using Thermogravimetry–Gas Chromatography and Single Quadrupole Mass Spectrometry (TG–GC/MS).

KEYWORDS:

• Wheat
• mildew
• biomass fuel
• combustion
• smoke release
• GC/MS

Credit authorship contribution statement

Jingwen Wang: Investigation, Data collection, Writing – original draft. Heng Yu: Investigation, Writing – original draft. Weijian Chen: Investigation. Liang Cheng: Investigation. Wei Cai: Methodology. Xiaowei Mu: Supervison, Writing – review and editing. Yuan Hu: Supervison, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Resources.

Declaration of competing interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.