Title:
Towards Design of a Nationwide Biorefining Network for Forest Residues in Ireland
Author(s):
Rai, A., Joyce, D., Monaghan, R.F.D.
Document(s):
Paper
Slide presentation
Abstract:
Currently the main product from the forestry sector of Ireland is timber logs made from stems of spruce trees, which constitute up to 60-75% of total tree volume. The remaining 25-40%, which consists of branches, stems of diameter <7cm, stumps and deformed trees, typically called as forest residues or brash, are left on the forest floor due to their lack of large-scale demand in Irish market. Only a small geographically specific portion of forest residues are bundled and sold as low-price fuel to local manufacturing sites. Recent studies have shown the use of forest residues as feedstock for producing high-value bioproducts such as liquid and gaseous biofuels. In this study three scenarios involving state-of-the-art thermochemical technologies, namely gasification, pyrolysis and hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) for biofuel production, are assessed for their techno-economic feasibility in Ireland. The gasification scenario produces biomass-derived compressed natural gas (Bio-CNG), pyrolysis and HTL produced biofuel, that were converted to liter diesel equivalent (LDE). The techno-economic assessment calculates the capital investment, operational cost and levelised cost of biofuel (LCOB) which was 0.94 €/LDE, 2.72 €/LDE and 1.46 €/LDE for gasification, pyrolysis and HTL repectively for a biorefinery capacity of 500 dt/day, which were much higher when compared to the wholesale prices of diesel in Ireland. The capacity of the biorefinery was then varied from 100-2000 dt/day to see the impact of scale on LCOB. Carbon tax which is going to be increases from 20 €/t to 80 €/t in Ireland was added into the diesel price to assess its impact. The gap reduced significantly when carbon tax was increased to 80 €/t and 160 €/t. Gasification scenario with increased carbon tax produced competitive diesel equivalent bio-CNG using the available resources in Ireland whereas pyrolysis and HTL required much higher capacity than Ireland has available.
Keywords:
forest residues, gasification, pyrolysis, hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL), techno-economic assessment (TEA)
Topic:
Biomass Resources
Subtopic:
Biomass potentials and biomass production models
Event:
27th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition
Session:
1AO.4.4
Pages:
32 - 39
ISBN:
978-88-89407-19-6
Paper DOI:
10.5071/27thEUBCE2019-1AO.4.4
Price:
FREE
