Population growth and economic development have increased not only energy consumption in recent years, but also the output of agro-industrial wastes. The handling and disposal of the ever increasing quantities of agro-industrial wastes are becoming matter of public concern and importance, due to the potential environmental and human health impacts. On the other hand, biomasses are regarded as an important renewable alternative energy resource. Obtained products from biomass can be used as substitutes for petroleum or natural gas. Moreover, biofuels are clean energy sources because of their low nitrogen and sulfur contents compared with fossil fuels. Also, such application provides an opportunity to solve their disposal problem and to contribute to neutral CO2 balance. Considering the thermochemical treatments, the more developed technologies are pyrolysis, gasification and combustion. Considering the biomass heterogeneity, their characterization is required, to reliably predict its behavior as a fuel. To biomass thermal conversion, proximate and ultimate analysis are one of the most important characterization methods. On the other hand, the basic organic constituents of biomass have a leading importance for the phase composition and they include three main structural biopolymers, namely cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. The concentration of these main components essentially important for a better understanding to biomass thermal chemical conversion.

The experimental determination of ultimate analysis data require special instrumentation, while proximate analysis data can be obtained easily by using common equipment but, the required time is high.

In this work, a new methodology is applied based on thermogravimetric analysis, DTG deconvolution and empirical correlations for characterizing the regional agro-industrial wastes. This methodology allows determining, approximately, the main parameters required for industrial operation in a short time. These parameters are the high heating value, the contents of moisture, volatiles matter, fixed carbon, ashes, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, lignine, cellulose and hemicellulose.

Thermogravimetric analysis was performed using a thermal analyzer DTG-60 simultaneous Brand: DTA-TG .SHIMADZU. 12 mg for each residue (marc and stalks) were used. The experiences were carried out following the ASTM International standard - Designation: E 1131-03 Standard Test Method for Compositional Analysis by thermogravimetry.

The results using TGA analysis were compared with the experimental results obtained applying the standard analytical techniques (ASTM D3173-87, ASTM D3172-89 (02), ASTM D1106-56, ASTM D1103-60). The results obtained by TGA are similar to the results obtained using standard techniques (ASTM). The average error was 3.8% using the TGA analysis. Therefore, this methodology allows the approximate determination of the main parameters required for industrial operation in a very short time.