Your choices:
1 Fuel: solid; Biomass (solid); 2 Process heat
| What is your resource? | What do you want to deliver? | What is the service the customer wants? |
| Biomass (digestible sludge) | District cooling | Comfortable indoor climate |
| Biomass (fermentable sludge) | District heating | Electricity |
| Biomass (solid) | Electricity | Process cooling (< 0 °C) |
| Geothermal | Fuel: Gaseous | 2 Process heat/steam (50 - 150 °C) |
| Sunshine | Fuel: Liquid | 2 Process heat (150 - 1000 °C) |
| Water | 1 Fuel: Solid | 2 Process heat (> 1000 °C) |
| Wind | Local cooling (ind. house) | Transport |
| Residual oils/fats etc | Local heating (ind. house) |
Pulverized fuel firing may be applied not only in large-scale boilers but can just as well be applied in industrial flame furnaces such as furnaces for glass melting, iron- and steel reheating prior to rolling and other high-temperature processes.
Replacing oil- or gas-firing with pulverized fuel firing in industrial processes will introduce problems since the handling and feeding of solid fuel is significantly more complex than that of liquid or gaseous fuels. Today's burners are also not really designed for this type of applications.
However – and in spite of the practical difficulties – there are no real reasons why solid biofuel should not be used to replace fossil fuel in such processes where the product quality can cope with the change in furnace atmosphere and with the ashes. Examples of processes where such a change would be feasible are cement production and building brick manufacturing. Also parts of the container glass industry might be a candidate, but it must be remembered that glass is sensitive to metals so that it may become coloured because of the ash. Hence, only such glass qualities that need not be colourless would be candidates.