Biomass: hot or not? Extended techno-economic assessment of Energy Conversion Parks

Abstract

Biomass is one of the most versatile sources of renewable energy and essential in attaining the 20-20-20 targets imposed by Europe. Biomass allows producing biofuels, electricity and heat. Besides, one can produce high value products from biomass, such as chemicals. However, for these purposes it is important to use biomass residue streams which are nowadays not or inefficiently used. As such, it is possible to avoid competition with food or feed. Next to the advantages such as versatility, biomass also has some disadvantages: it is often geographically dispersed, waste streams have a high moisture content, low energy density, and biomass typifies itself by seasonal variations. To counteract these disadvantages an Energy Conversion Park (ECP) can provide a solution. An ECP is a specific form of a biorefinery in which focus lies on regional residue streams. An ECP combines diverse sources of local biomass residue streams and converts them using a combination of technologies into energy and materials. For the development of an ECP a ten-step procedure is developed which allows screening all regional possibilities and as such increases chances of implementation. Important is that all stakeholders are involved during the whole procedure in order to increase chances of acceptance. Starting point is the selection of a location. At this location, local support is created, an inventory is made of all local biomass residue streams and the demand of heat. Based on this inventory ECP concepts are set up that match local demand and supply and that optimize the utilization of these residue streams. The concepts are presented to the involved stakeholders. Those concepts which contribute most to the local situation, will be analyzed using an extended techno-economic assessment (TEA) in order to get a clear idea of the risks that potential investors may have. Based on that analysis a decision will be taken on the implementation. The practicability of the procedure is proven by the decision in 2013 to implement one of the cases which was analyzed within this dissertation....