Standards & Technical Specifications

Standards relating to solid biofuels

Standards for Solid biofuels are being developed by a Technical Committee of the European standards organization CEN. This Technical Committee is called TC335 Solid Biofuels. In each participating country in CEN, a so called mirror committee is started that follows the development of the standards in the Technical Committee and the working groups in this TC. Comments are sent in to the working groups by the national mirror committees under the national standardization body, in Irelands case NSAI. The work of TC335 solid biofuels is nearly completed, but the work will continue on a world wide level in the Technical Committee TC238 Solid biofuels under ISO. The mandate of the ISO group is wider than the one of CEN TC335, in that it also will include aquatic biomass.
A fast way to develop a standard is by creating first a Technical Specification (TS). The TS is then used in practice and comments are collected. Within 5 years of the publication of the TS, it has to be revised and updated to become a full European Norm (EN) or has to be discarded. Sometimes a subject does not warrant a full standard, in such cases a Technical Report (TR) may be published that describes a method for testing one or another property

At the national standardisation bodies, in the case of Ireland, the NSAI, one can buy the latest published version of a standard. This is a bit of a bother, because often TS's are being revised and radically changed, but until they have been published as a full blown European Norm, it is only possible to obtain the outdated Technical Specification.

Nearly all the TS in the list below have been updated to draft EN standards, most are in the so-called balloting process where the 39 member countries vote on whether they can accept the standard or not. If the large majority of the countries vote in favor, the standard is accepted.  Even when the standard is accepted several months will pass because the standard English text will have to be translated at least in German and French. The three main language versions are published on the same occasion.

In the lists below first the published standards are given. Note that the full European Norms are at the bottom of the first list. In the second list the standards that are being updated or developed are listed. Those with FprEn are almost ready to be published.
Please refer to the National Standards Authority of Ireland (NSAI) for comprehensive list of standards: www.standards.ie . Here one can also order all published standards.

For a preview of the most important standards click on the link to the COFORD Connects Note on standards (pdf 182Kb)

Standards under development