Improved metrological methods and standards for liquid and solid biofuels  

Biofuels produced by advanced biological processes can help to achieve the EU's greenhouse gas emission reduction targets in the medium term. Information on the type and quality of the biomass or biofuel used is important to help optimizing their combustion for higher efficiencies and lower emissions in energy production, and also to allow for fair accounting or taxation according to their energy content. Long-term reliability and global comparability of analytical data must be ensured, and full knowledge of the traceability chain is required to establish traceability to the International System of Units (SI) for online measurement results from liquid and solid biofuel analyses.

These challenges are addressed in the EMPIR project BIOFMET, which has been started in summer 2020 and involves several European partners from different metrology institutes, universities and industries. One goal of this project is to optimize energy production based on solid and liquid biofuels through faster and more accurate determination of key biofuel parameters. In this context, it explores more precise metrological methods and the development of advanced traceable measurement standards for the determination of energy content, impurities and ash content, as well as the development of new moisture transfer standards, calibration systems and reference materials.

PTB's Working Group 3.32 considers the metrological framework for energy content measurements by bomb calorimetry in order to ensure the traceability of newly developed methods for energy content measurements in the field. Specifically, this involves the measurement of the calorific values of different types of solid (high- and low-quality wood chips, wood pellets) and liquid biofuels (bioethanol and biodiesel), which are compared with the results of other national metrology institutes in an interlaboratory comparison.

This research is performed within the 19ENG09 BIOFMET project and receives funding from the EMPIR programme (European Metrology Programme for Innovation and Research) co-financed by the Participating States and from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme.

Further information: http://biofmet.eu/