A Sustainable Power Supply System, Iran's Opportunities via Bioenergy

Abstract

Biomass as a sustainable renewable energy resource with numerous advantages in terms of storage, transportation, and conversion to gas and liquid that no other renewables can compete with bioenergy in these fields could be a proper power solution for Iran as a developing country with abundant fossil and renewable resources. Despite the lake of official statistics, a comprehensive review of biomass resource estimation of Iran has been conducted for the first time and 72 Mt animal manure, 61 Mt sewage and waste water, 19 Mt agricultural residue, 15 Mt municipal solid wastes, 4 Mt woody residues, and 1.3 Mt citrus residues are estimated. A novel biopower model structure is introduced using reference energy system modeling approach as a network representation of the technical activities to convert biomass to electricity. Therefore, 781 ML biodiesel, 5690 ML bioethanol and 20,500 MCM biogas could be extracted through the proposed structure. Thus, total biopower potential will be 63.7 TWh that is equal to 23.2% of total power generation in Iran (274.4 TWh). The sustainability assessment is conducted and the results show 79 Mt of carbon reduction, 9366 annual job creation and 0.01 USD/kWh cost reduction in order to 100% of bioenergy potential utilization, which are 79%, 22%, and 10% improve in social, environmental and economic indicators, respectively. © 2018 American Institute of Chemical Engineers Environ Prog, 38: 171–188, 2019

Biofuel characteristics and combustion emissions of poultry litter and lignocellulosic biomass

“…12 In a sustainable waste management strategy, the combustion of energy-rich organic waste materials for renewable energy sources are increasingly used to minimize waste accumulation, to eliminate environmental impact, and to diversify current energy demand. 13,14 Although the studies cited above have highlighted the energy-based benefits of organic waste resources, to the best of authors' knowledge, little is known about the mitigation potential of lignocellulosic biomass residues on co-combustion behavior of PL and their effectiveness in the mitigation of ash related problems.…”

Social Aspects in the Assessment of Biobased Value Chains

“…Job creation was the most often assessed aspect of all. It was mainly addressed in the cultivation stage of forest biomass [55,58] and sugarcane [42,48] value chains, and in conversion plants [56,68,74]. Some examples of this aspect identified in the literature are given below.…”

Feasibility evaluation of an off‐grid solar‐biomass system for remote area electrification considering various economic factors

“…For example, in the case of solar energy, Iran is placed in the world's Sun Belt, 31 the direct normal irradiation (DNI) reaches up to 5.5 kWh/m 2 /day in the country, and there is an average of 300 sunny days per year 32 . Regarding bioenergy, it is estimated that Iran has 63.7 TWh potential of energy from available biomass resources, of which 50 TWh corresponds to biogas, and the rest are bioethanol and biodiesel 33 …”