Relationships between lignin contents and heating values of biomass

The higher heating values (HHVs) of 14 biomass fuels were correlated with their lignin content. There was a highly significant linear correlation between the HHV of the biomass fuel and the lignin content. The HHV (kJ g−1) of the biomass fuel as a function of lignin content (L, wt%) was calculated using the following equations: for which the correlation coefficients (r) were 0.9504 and 0.9302, respectively. The HHVs calculated with these equations showed mean differences of 0.056 and 0.067%, respectively.