In Brazil, the use of wood for energy generation has been related to the charcoal production, due to the existing demand for the product by the steelworks sector. The tree species used in its great majority, are of the genus Eucalyptus. Nevertheless, regarding the variations that occur in the wood quality of the above cited genus, it is necessary to study them, since that fact can bring about negative consequences in both the quality and yield of charcoal, which will reflect negatively on the operations of the iron and steel industries blast furnaces. The work investigated the quality of the wood from different genetic materials of eucalyptus for charcoal production by means of thermogravimetric analysis. In the study, the resistance to the thermal degradation of wood and the qualitative and quantitative features of charcoal were taken into consideration. It was found that the highest peaks of thermal degradation occurred in the range of temperature between 300 and 400(0)C, the genetic material was the one which presented the lowest loss of total mass and the three was the less stable, having those presented, respectively, higher and lower gravimetric yield in charcoal; all the tested genetic materials presented satisfactory gravimetric results both in yield and in quality.
Wood; thermal stability; gravimetric yield in charcoal
