Classification of used wood to biomass fuel or solid recycled fuel and cascading use in Finland

VTT has studied cascading use and energy use of used wood. The direct use of wood for energy is relatively much lower, and the use of wood for pulp industry much higher in Finland than in the EU. As Finland ex-ports a significant part of its wood biomass (as pulp, paper and board, timber and plywood), the cascading cycles of wood products take place outside the Finnish borders, e.g. in other EU Member State. This limits the cascading cy-cles inside Finland. Guidelines has developed for the classification used wood (post-consumer wood) for energy use including implementation of the legislation and standards in Finland. It is necessary to define the impact of possible contaminants on the energy utilisation of used wood. This is helpful for categorisation, as well as for identification and characterisation of the contaminants. The guidelines also include an overall categorisation used wood. In this classification used wood is divided in 4 categories A, B, C and D. Categories A and B are classified under EN ISO 17225-1-Solid biofuel and class C under EN 15359-Solid recovered fuel standard. Fuels falling into category C should be incinerated according to waste incineration legislation. Class D wood is treated by wood preservatives and is hazardous waste.