"Assessing the GHG emissions of rapeseed and soybean biodiesel in compliance to the EU renewable energy directive methodology for biofuels"

Residential heating systems fed with biomass represent a low environmental impact solution, also because of efficient technologies, developed in several European countries, where the products have been tested and certified. The European standards that have already been published deal mainly with efficiency, emissions and safety requirements in residential installations. The Biomass Research Centre of the University of Perugia has realized in its laboratories a test bench for pellet stoves and boilers, based on EN 14785. The most important elements of the test bench are: a volume with thermocouples (trihedron), that surrounds the stove/boiler, to perform safety tests; a balance, on which the boiler/stove is positioned, to measure weight variation and fuel consumption during the test; a data acquisition system; a flue gases measuring and evacuation section to measure flue gases composition; and a hydraulic circuit (for thermal output measuring). Objective of the present work is to describe the design and realization of the test bench and to report the first results obtained testing a 6 kW pellet stove.