Blanca Castells

Blanca Castells
Universidad Politécnica de Madrid | UPM · E.T.S.I. de Minas y Energía

PhD

About

63
Publications
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191
Citations

Publications

Publications (63)
Article
Hydrogen and biogas mixtures offer a promising solution to meet industrial heat demands that renewable electricity cannot fully supply. This study investigates the flammability characteristics of quaternary gas mixtures composed of methane (CH4), hydrogen (H2), carbon dioxide (CO2), and air, which are relevant for industrial safety in explosive atm...
Article
Full-text available
This study presents a novel experimental method to determine the flammability limits and the minimum oxygen concentration in methane–hydrogen mixtures using the spark test apparatus (STA), by incorporating CO2 as an inert compound. The proposed methodology allows for the more accurate and efficient assessment of the safety of these flammable mixtur...
Article
Solid biofuels are one of the main energy industries, where fire and explosions have occurred during the last decades. This industry continues growing, however, the fundamental understanding of these materials is still limited and far from what is needed to ensure a safe working environment. A complete characterization of materials is essential to...
Conference Paper
Due to the increase of global concerns over environmental degradation, the search for sustainable energy sources has led to increased utilization of renewable fuels such as biogas and biodiesel. Despite their advantages in terms of sustainability, challenges persist in their efficient utilization. An easy method to approach these challenges is addr...
Conference Paper
Hydrogen combustion is presented as a potential solution to cover the heat demand with renewable energies. However, current technologies do not allow the combustion of pure hydrogen and it must often be mixed with fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide (CO2) has proven to be useful for stabilizing hydrogen combustion, as has methane (CH4). Therefore, this re...
Conference Paper
The actual climate crisis is forcing the development of new energy sources that mitigate the negative effects of the climate change. Because of that, the use of fossil fuels is expected to be significantly reduced in the coming decades. In this scenario, the production of renewable fuels that reduce the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) is one of the...
Conference Paper
The increasing focus on sustainability necessitates the examination of environmental impacts across all sectors, including pyrotechnics. Pollutant emissions have been extensively studied, but information on sustainability in the pyrotechnics sector is scarce. Thus, a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) to study two widely used pyrotechnic devices: bangers an...
Article
Full-text available
Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was performed on six samples of pine wood, poplar sawdust and olive residue, and the kinetic parameters were evaluated by using isoconversional models. The hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin contents were also estimated using the Fraser–Suzuki deconvolution method. In addition, a range of thermodynamic parameters a...
Article
Full-text available
Due to the growing interest in using biomass as a renewable energy source, this study presents a comparative analysis between two prominent biomass conversion technologies-anaerobic digestion and biomass pyrolysis -focused on wheat straw biomass. The objective of this study is to evaluate and compare the efficiency, energy output, and environmental...
Article
Cement industry, due to the decomposition of CaCO3 and the production of clinker, emits large amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. This anthropogenic gas can be captured and through its synthesis with green hydrogen, methanol and finally synthetic fuels are achieved. By using e-fuel, Europe's climate neutrality objectives could be achieved. However,...
Article
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The use of fireworks as a sign of celebration is a common practice in many countries. During the last few years, this sector has been subjected to various social criticisms that have even led to a ban on their use in different places. One of the main causes is the environmental pollution they generate, due to emissions from combustion reactions ass...
Article
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The influence of particle size on the flammability and explosion severity has been widely demonstrated for coals along the years: the thinner the particle size, the more flammable is the dust and more severe are the explosions. Later, the increase on the use of biomass led to using the same resources and techniques for both groups of materials, con...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The use of renewable energy has heavily increased in the last years due to climate change and global warning. Because of that, several countries have reduced the use of coal to produce energy, leading to abandon or disuse of multiple power plants. In this context, it is possible to adapt the power plant to use a mixture of coal and biomass as fuel...
Article
Full-text available
A fire inside a pyrotechnic store can lead to simultaneous initiation of the stored articles, regardless of their risk category, producing a shockwave caused by the released gas pressure. In fact, several accidents have occurred throughout history in pyrotechnic stores. This indicates the high risk posed by pyrotechnics due to their flammability. D...
Article
Full-text available
In recent years, coal mine methane measurement techniques in mines have been gaining importance as poor firedamp control in work can cause the interruption of production and even fatal accidents. Since there is currently a variety of methane measurement equipment with different functional characteristics and measurement principles, a study is neede...
Article
Handling combustible dusts not only continues to pose a risk to industry but can also affect the safety of society. Explosion risk could be avoided or mitigated trying to guarantee inherent safety throughout the product life chain. One way to reduce the risks when dealing with combustible dust is to increase the Minimum Ignition Energy (MIE) in ord...
Article
Full-text available
The energy sector is in the spotlight today for its contribution to global warming and its dependence on global geopolitics. Even though many countries have reduced their use of coal, the COVID-19 crisis, the drop in temperatures in Central Asia, and the war between Russia and Ukraine have shown that coal continues to play an important role in this...
Chapter
This chapter extends a previous experience of educational innovation carried out at the E.T.S.I. Minas y Energía of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, deepening the analysis of the impact that training exercises with controlled errors has on learning. Based on the results obtained in the marks of the evaluable tests in three different subjects,...
Conference Paper
The health crisis caused by the SARS-COV-2 virus produced a drastic change in teaching in March 2020, when face-to-face teaching was forced to become online teaching. It led to changes in teaching methodologies, teaching materials and evaluation methods. The objective of this study is to determine which of these changes in the on-site university ha...
Article
Enriching biogas with hydrogen could enable conventional natural gas systems to be used for clean energy. This technique has generally been evaluated using laboratory devices, so this study addresses a conventional combustion system, consisting of a 100 kW burner fed with biogas-hydrogen mixtures instead of natural gas. Flame behavior and ignition...
Article
Full-text available
Global warming and the GHG effect have forced the reduction of the energetic dependence on fossil fuels. Because of that, research focusing on biomass properties, characteristics and energetic conversion has increased in the last decades. The present study was carried out in terms of determination of kinetic parameters, focusing on two different en...
Article
Full-text available
Environmental problems are frequently related to energy use, estimated to grow at 1.6% per year until 2035. The transport sector accounts for 30% of energy demand and aviation is growing around 2.6% per year. Thus, low-emissions policies promote the use of sustainable aviation fuels. This work simulates a gasification and Fischer-Tropsch process to...
Article
Full-text available
Biogas is a renewable gas with low heat energy, which makes it extremely difficult to use as fuel in conventional natural gas equipment. Nonetheless, the use of hydrogen as a biogas additive has proven to have a beneficial effect on flame stability and combustion behavior. This study evaluates the biogas–hydrogen combustion in a conventional natura...
Article
The use of renewable energy has increased in the last decades including the consumption of biofuels, so the research focused on improving these energetic vectors has increased too, developing techniques that enhance energetic properties of these fuels. In this context, torrefaction is a thermal pre-treatment that diminishes the main disadvantages p...
Article
Self-ignition of solid fuels storage is one of the main causes of human and economic losses. Additionally, each fire caused by this phenomenon emits an amount of toxic gases that contributes on the development of climate change. Nowadays, several methodologies are used in order to detect the self-ignition tendency of solid fuels, but they have as m...
Article
In the last decade, the use of renewable resources has increased significantly in order to reduce the energetic dependence on fossil fuels, as they have an important contribution to the global warning and greenhouse gasses effect. Therefore, the role of biomass on the energetic mix is becoming critical nowadays, as it is the only renewable resource...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
En este artículo se presenta la experiencia de innovación docente introducida en asignaturas impartidas en la E.T.S.I. Minas y Energía de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, basada en el entrenamiento con ejercicios que contienen errores controlados. Se analizan los resultados obtenidos con el empleo de esta metodología y su impacto en el aprendi...
Article
Full-text available
Dust explosions and fires pose an industrial safety problem, due to the human and material losses caused by them. As many fuel processes and material transport generate powder particles, the effect of granulometry in different flammability properties has been studied to define the relationship between both. Deep knowledge of this relationship reduc...
Article
Full-text available
Despite many advantages of the utilization of biomass as a renewable energy source, certain bottlenecks during biomass plant operation can be identified. Transport and collection of biomass as well as non-uniform material characteristics are issues related to decreasing efficiency of logistics and fuel manipulation which can also cause economic pro...
Chapter
Biofuels have proved the environmental benefits that their use make, and how by using these clean energies and reducing the use of fossil fuels we could reduce pollution and emissions. However, they have a main disadvantage: its lower energy density compared to fossil fuels. These two facts together have been the key of an intermediate solution, th...
Chapter
Any industrial facility that generates or handles any type of solid biofuels should design prevention and protection measurements based on both the ignition sources that may be present and the characteristics of the dusts. These characteristics highly vary between substances and even among the same substance, so their determination is essential and...
Chapter
Nowadays, environmental issues are the key of policy, economic and social movements. Due to its importance, the world is developing solutions capable to assure a sustainable future. By means of large agreements between countries, a new series of directives and legislation are created allowing to control and reduce the most harmful activities and to...
Chapter
The use of biofuels is subject to great controversy. On one side, environmental policies point biofuels as the key actor of new green technologies to decrease the harmful emissions related with the use of fossil fuels. On the other side, biofuels were accused of competing with food production for land. The reality is that the use of biofuels is rap...
Chapter
The chemical composition of the materials has a high effect in their flammability and ignition risks. In the case of coals, it is well known that an increase on the volatiles content, meaning a decrease in the ash content, causes a rise in the flammability probability of the samples.
Chapter
Fossil fuel is defined as “a natural fuel such as coal or gas formed in the geological past from the remains of living organisms” [1]. In this chapter we are going to focus on its solid form, coal, “a black or dark brown rock consisting chiefly of carbonized plant matter, found mainly in underground seams and used as fuel” [2].
Chapter
Accidents in the process industry result into human and material losses, accident cost, production stop cost, judgements, etc. In order to avoid all those consequences, improvement of industrial safety measures must be achieved, but it cannot be accomplished without a deep knowledge of their primary causes, spread processes, etc., so the risk asses...
Chapter
Regardless the goal and final use of solid fuels, all these substances need to be handled, processed and stored. These steps involve several risks that need to be identified, characterised and treated in order to avoid, or at least reduce, the consequences of a possible accident.
Chapter
The flammable nature of solid biofuels has been proved, and also the risky conditions on which those biofuels are produced, treated, stored or used. Because of that, it is necessary to stablish safety measures in order to avoid accidents by reducing risks. Those safety measures can be divided in two categories: prevention and protection measures.
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Tutoring is an essential didactic resource of the learning process, in which students can receive specific attention about particular doubts and understanding problems. However, the personalized assistance to the problems that occurred during the autonomous learning process outside of the classroom has a delay when the tutoring takes place in perso...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
In the last decade, many alternative teaching methodologies have been developed, all of them belonging to the framework of educational innovation, with the aim of encouraging students' motivation, adapting to new technologies and improving learning. Specifically, this study focuses on the use of tutorial videos in which the explanation of some topi...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Tutoring is an essential didactic resource of the learning process, in which students can receive specific attention about particular doubts and understanding problems. However, the personalized assistance to the problems that occurred during the autonomous learning process outside of the classroom has a delay when the tutoring takes place in perso...
Conference Paper
Detection of incipient combustion process is a key factor in industrial safety as it can prevent severe accidents. Different methods to detect self-heating processes have been developed, as it might be the first step of self-ignition process, including the detection through gas emission methodology whose improvement is the aim of this study. Six di...
Conference Paper
The use of Holi dust (colour dust) is extensive around the world since the popularity of the parties and events with this kind of show is increasing considerably. Despite the fact of its extensive use, its highly flammable nature is poorly known. Currently, some serious accidents related to the Holi dust have been registered. The organic nature of...
Article
Full-text available
The use of hydrogen as an energy vector seems today one of the most viable alternatives, although its use involves safety problems due to the generation of explosive atmospheres. Lower and upper flammability limits are one of the most important parameters at the time of characterize and handle flammable gases. This paper is focused on the evaluatio...

Questions

Question (1)
Question
Hello everybody,
I’m applying for some funds so we can renew our lab and I thought elemental analysis could be an interesting equipment to buy. However I have no clue regarding its price. Do you know approximately how much could cost the equipment? Or at least in which price range is it?
Thanks!

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