Quality and specification of solid biofuels in Europe

Ukraine has rather big potential of biomass available for energy production. Biomass (excluding the share that is used by other sectors of economy) can cover up to 9% of the total primary energy demand. Technologies of biomass utilization are mostly at the beginning of their development in Ukraine, but they have good prospects for commercialization in the near future. The quality classification is interesting for both small and big consumers. The quality classification is focused to the most important commercial biofuels as briquettes, pellets, wood chips, crushed wooden fuel, wooden logs, sawdust, bark, straw bales. That classification is flexible and thus manufacturer or customer can choose any properties class corresponding with produced or required fuel quality. That free classification does not bind mutually different properties of individual fuels. Its advantage is in fact that manufacturer and customer can agree with a certain characteristics for each simple case. In the paper are presented European examples of specification of properties for briquettes, pellets, straw bales and for classes of high-quality solid biofuels for household. Development of bioenergy technologies would reduce Ukraine dependence on imported energy carriers, enhance its energy security at the expense of organizing energy supply based on local renewable sources, create a lot of new jobs (mostly in rural area), contribute greatly to the improvement of ecological situation