Conversion of industrial waste materials to valuable resources would essentially take part in an ecologically sustainable future. There are still large amounts of undervalued biomass wastes generated from a diverse range of industries that are disposed in landfields. They have potential to produce valuable materials and fuels, such as charcoal, bio-oils and bio-gas through thermal upgrading. In order to enhance the efficiency of the thermal upgrading process, comprehensive characterisation of the raw biomass materials is essential. We have developed a novel thermal characterisation method that utilises computer aided thermal analysis incorporated with a gas analyser. The method was applied on two biomass materials, wood sawdust and bagasse. The paper discusses the results obtained with the novel thermal characterisation technique._x000D_
FORMAL CITATION:Strezov, V, Strezov, L and Herbertson, J, 2006. Fundamental characterisation of waste and biomass for char production, in Proceedings Green Processing 2006, pp 185-188 (The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: Melbourne).