engleski

Results from the First Croatian SRC Poplar Plantation

Recent trends in the bioenergy sector development in Croatia highlight the raw material availability as one of the key factors that will define the prospect of future investments in bioenergy facilities. Therefore it is logical to expect considerable investments in SRC plantations to overcome these near future challenges. Main factors influencing the feasibility of SRC plantation are the biomass yield and properties of the produced raw material that affect the quality of solid biofuels. In this respect, research was conducted in one of the first SRC poplar plantations, established in the autumn of 2012 in Baranjsko Petrovo Selo by planting S1 and M1 poplar clones in spacing 2.8 m between the rows and 2.4 m inside the row (to leave open the possibility for transformation of SRC plantation to poplar forest plantation by thinning). In early spring of 2016, based on the DBH distribution, 6 trees of S 1 and 5 trees of M 1 clone were cut, measured and sampled for laboratory analyses of moisture content, wood/bark ratio, ash content and calorific value according to HRN EN ISO standards for solid biofuels. Results were processed by analyses of variance. DBH (9.8 cm vs. 6.0 cm), height (11.3 m vs. 9.1 m) and biomass yield per tree (17.5 kg oven dry vs. 6.4 kg oven dry) differed statistically in favor of S 1 clone. The share of bark was also statistically different, 17.3% in the case of S 1 and 20.7% in M1 clone. Average moisture content (not statistically different) amounted 53.2% and pointed the need for optimizing the harvesting season or to consider natural drying opportunities. Great differences were found in ash content of bark (5.83% in S 1 and 5.96% in M1) compared to the ash content of wood (0.49% in S 1 and 0.53% in M1) and these results together with the share of the bark define the feedstock in terms of suitable end-user of appropriate solid biofuel produced. Additionally, due to the ash content differences, the calorific value of the bark was 3% lower than the calorific value of the wood. Results acquired by this research could be used in a critical evaluation of the potential of SRC plantations to offset the already present shortage of the available biomass for energy in Croatia (in terms of expected yield and raw material quality) as well as to design suitable harvesting systems by adopting appropriate harvesting technology and supply chain management.

biomass yield, moisture content, ash content, harvesting

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