Technical Note SB41: Co-firing wood with coal

Co-firing refers to the combustion of biomass (process residues, forestry residues, purpose grown crops, other organic wastes) with coal.  It therefore involves the use of two quite dissimilar fuels and may be considered essentially as a fuel management process to ensure the best blend is identified for each particular case.  Co-firing may be used for strategic or economic reasons particularly when there is a shortage or high cost of one of the fuels. A blended fuel may also facilitate combustion.

[Note that cofiring can also be of a blend of different quality fuels such as wood pellets with bark to make a better combustible fuel. This Technical note is only for the option of cofiring coal and biomass but many of the same principles apply to cofiring different quality biomass fuels.]