Performance of an Intelligent Biomass Fuel Burner as an Alternative to Coal-Fired Heating for Tobacco Curing

As an alternative to fossil fuels, biomass burning represents a feasible way of greening the tobacco flue-curing-drying process, especially when it is self-produced. In this work, a biomass briquette fuel (BBF) burner used for flue-curing tobacco was designed and assembled using modern and mature electromechanical technologies, while also making use of its own structure to prevent high-temperature damage to the photoelectric elements during fuel combustion, and deploying an intelligent tobacco controller (ITC) to ensure orderly heating. A comparison between this new burner and a traditional coal-fired heating furnace revealed that when ITC was in operation, the BBF could meet the heating needs for tobacco curing, and the temperature difference between the target and the actual dry-bulb temperature (DBT) in the bulk curing barn was well controlled within a range of +/- 0.5 degrees C. Additionally, the BBF burner fully used the biomass briquette and reduced the cost per kilogram of dry leaf curing. Furthermore, non-manual management heating modes could be realized during firing. Considering that the structure of the new device is similar to gas or oil burners, in terms of heating via connecting sockets, it can also potentially be used in small-scale boilers if the ITC programming chip is changed.