ANALYSIS OF THE CALORIFIC VALUE OF EUCALYPTUS GLOBULUS LABILL AND PIPTOCOMA DISCOLOR (KUNTH) PRUSKI FOR CHARCOAL PRODUCTION IN THE ANDES OF ECUADOR

The objective of this work was to analyze the calorific value of Eucalyptus globulus and Piptocoma discolor in wood and charcoal in the Chimborazo Province. The standards of the Ecuadorian Institute for Standardization (INEN) and the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) International were used for the laboratory analyzes of wood density, volume, biomass, volatile material, ash percentage and calorific value. For this, 5 samples of wood and charcoal were used for each species. For the statistical analysis of the data, the theoretical assumptions of normality and homoscedasticity were verified and comparison tests were used for two independent samples with the statistical package IBM-SPSS 25.0. The results obtained were: Eucalyptus globulus 43.88% (wood moisture), 11.43% (charcoal moisture), 0.96 g/cm³ (green wood density), 0.82 g/c m³ (dry wood density), 0.36 g/cm³ (charcoal density), 1064.13 kcal/kg (wood calorific value), 6719.79 kcal/kg (coal calorific value) while Piptocoma discolor: 43.88% (wood moisture), 59 .38% (charcoal moisture), 0.85 g/cm³ (green wood density), 0.56 g/cm³ (green wood density), 0.32 g/cm³ (charcoal density), 804.61 kcal/kg ( wood calorific value), 2604.01 kcal/kg (coal calorific value). It is concluded that the highest efficiency of calorific power in kcal/kg was obtained for Eucalyptus globulus both in charcoal and wood.