Combustion4.0 - not just for energy!

Wood is a renewable resource, so with sustainable management with a wood pellet furnace, only up to 40g/kWh of CO2 is emitted - making this form of energy supply almost CO2 neutral. In 2020, 670,000 households in Austria were supplied with 17 billion kWh of heating and hot water energy. Every year, more than 8,000 pellet heaters and nearly 2,000 wood chip heaters are added to this total. The Combustion4.0 project aims to reinvent biomass combustion technology so that it provides energy from pellets or wood chips in a CO2-negative way. This is achieved by burning only a portion of the carbon found in biomass and materially using the rest as biochar. Biochar represents a potentially interesting resource in various sectors (agriculture, construction, plastic production,...), where the carbon can be stored or replace fossil resources. Thus, per kWh of heating energy, about 200g of CO2 can be stored. In the project Combustion2.0 the technical basis for a technology is to be compiled, in order to make product qualities of the biochar possible also in the smallest power range and to make at the same time the warmth demand-oriented available. The technology is based on the screw burner technology developed by BEST, which makes it possible to vary the fuel residence time. The technology will be patented and licensed to manufacturers of biomass combustion plants in order to achieve a high market penetration. This means that from 2035 onwards, 10% of all plants sold annually could be equipped with Combustion2.0 technology, which corresponds to an annual increase in CO2 storage of 1,900 t CO2.