The Climate Conference in Copenhagen has resulted in an unprecedented number of visitors to ECN’s Phyllis database. Phyllis is a free database that provides information on all sorts of biomass and biomass fuels. (The database is owned and operated by ECN unit Biomass, Coal & Environmental Research.) With the exception of ECN’s homepage and the Publications page it has in its lifetime been the most popular ECN webpage (in terms of unique visitors per month). It is a primary source of information on biomass, worldwide.

ECN laid the foundation for worldwide database

The Phyllis data are based in part on the analyses and tests conducted by ECN. In effect, however, anybody anywhere in the world can submit and read out data; a sort of Wikipedia for biomass data. Luc Rabou remembers once receiving an e-mail from the Kingdom of Tonga, an archipelago in Polynesia.  “A Tongan had collected certain local biomass data and sent it to us to include in Phyllis. Fantastic isn’t it!?”
You’ll find a great deal of information about biomass in the database, but no prices. Rabou emphasises that Phyllis does not list trade prices. Anyone visiting Phyllis wanting to know the price of a ton of liquid chicken manure has come to the wrong internet address. It is a database of technical data where anyone who wants to know can find out what the combustion value is of Spanish olive wood, or of Dutch pollard willows.
The Phyllis Project started in the late 1990s. Many people who have been involved with biomass from the outset know their facts and have the information most important to them at hand. “But Phyllis is and will remain decidedly interesting for newcomers to the biomass market”, Luc Rabou says. “I can see that by the e-mails I regularly receive.” The issues of the day also determine the interest in Phyllis. Indeed, in the weeks leading up to the Copenhagen Conference online statistics revealed a rise in the number of people visiting Phyllis for information.
There is even better news: Phyllis is to have a new brother, Biodat. This is a new database on biomass fuels, but also on biomass ashes, liquid biomass, etc. The main difference is that the data in Biodat are far more reliable than in Phyllis. Today, Phyllis has a larger variety of information, but you need to apply some statistics to get reliable information. This is no longer needed in Biodat. The data in Biodat have been measured using standardized analysis methods, and of each data point it is known exactly who measured it, when and how. Error margins and detection limits are also often included. Today, Biodat is still smaller than Phyllis, but in the coming years, supported by the EERA programme, Biodat will grow and eventually make Phyllis obsolete.

Contact
Luc Rabou
ECN Biomass, Coal & Environmental Research
Phone: +31 (0)22 456 4467
E-mail: Luc Rabou

Info
www.ecn.nl/phyllis/