Life cycle analysis of small scale pellet boilers characterized by high efficiency and low emissions

Monteleone, Beatrice; Chiesa, Maria; Marzuoli, Riccardo; Verma, Vijay; Schwarz, Markus; Carlon, Elisa; Schmidl, Christoph; Denti, A. Ballarin

doi:10.1016/j.apenergy.2015.05.089

Cited by 37 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Obviously, several other works dealing with LCA analysis of pellet boilers (e.g., [46]), renewable and fossil fuels (e.g., [47,48]), photovoltaic panels (e.g., [49]), conventional and near-zero energy buildings (e.g., [50]), concert (e.g., [51]), etc. are available in literature.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life Cycle Assessment of a Commercially Available Organic Rankine Cycle Unit Coupled with a Biomass Boiler

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2020

Energies

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Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) turbogenerators are a well-established technology to recover from medium to ultra-low grade heat and generate electricity, or heat and work as cogenerative units. High firmness, good reliability and acceptable efficiency guarantee to ORCs a large range of applications: from waste heat recovery of industrial processes to the enhancement of heat generated by renewable resources like biomass, solar or geothermal. ORC unit coupled with biomass boiler is one of the most adopted arrangements. However, despite biomass renewability, it is mandatory to evaluate the environmental impact of systems composed by boilers and ORCs taking into account the entire life cycle. To this purpose, the authors perform a life cycle assessment of a commercially available 150 kW cogenerative ORC unit coupled with a biomass boiler to assess the global environmental performance. The system is modelled in SimaPro using different approaches. Results show that the most impacting processes in terms of CO2 equivalent emissions are the ones related to biomass production and organic fluid leakages with 71% and 19% of the total. Therefore, being fluid release in the environment high impacting, a comparison among three fluids is also performed. Analysis shows that adopting a hydrofluoroolefin fluid with a low global warming potential instead of the hydrocarbon fluid as already used in the cycle guarantees a significant improvement of the environmental performance.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life Cycle Assessment of a Commercially Available Organic Rankine Cycle Unit Coupled with a Biomass Boiler

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Benato

2020

Energies

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“…In general, emissions from wood combustion vary widely due to the type of combustion technology (e.g., automatically and manually stoked combustion systems) and type of fuel (e.g., firewood, wood chips, wood pellets). ,− Batch wise firewood stoves are mainly characterized by a natural convection driven combustion. Thus, the combustion quality is limited compared to automatically controlled systems such as firewood or pellet boilers. − In principle, the performance (i.e., emissions and efficiency) of firewood stoves depends on many factors such as combustion technology, − installation conditions, − fuel quality, − and user behavior. ,− In recent years, emission control legislation with more stringent limits forced the European stove industry to develop advanced firewood stoves with reduced emissions and increased efficiency . For this reason, a wide variety of new pollution control technologies are available on the market.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Potential of Integrated Emissions Reduction Systems in a Firewood Stove under Real Life Operation Conditions

et al. 2017

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Firewood combustion is the main renewable heating source for households in Europe and is responsible for a certain share of harmful emissions such as particle matter. Common wood combustion appliances in households are firewood stoves. Forced by stringent limits of European emission control legislations, the stove industry developed a wide variety of new pollution control technologies which can be integrated into firewood stoves. The aim of this study was to evaluate the performance of three emission control systems to be applied in firewood stoves which were a foam ceramic element, a catalytic active coated foam ceramic element, and a honeycomb catalyst. Combustion tests with these devices and dummies under real life operation conditions were conducted which included starting phases and stove operation in nominal and partial load. Particulate and gaseous emissions were measured, and emission conversion rates were calculated. Results showed no significant emission reduction rates for the foam ceramic element. The catalytic active coated foam ceramic element reduced the emissions considerably in nominal and partial load operation up to 32% for carbon monoxide, 61% for organic gaseous carbon, and up to 41% for particulate matter. However, emission reduction rates were rather low in the starting phase. The honeycomb catalyst showed the highest emission reduction potential of all systems in the study. The reduction rates were significant in all combustion phases and were up to 73% for carbon monoxide, 58% for organic gaseous carbon, and up to 33% for particulate matter.

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“…Even if, in the last years, some LCA studies about the environmental performances of pellet in Spain [35], Italy [36,37], Finland [38], Thailand [17] and China [39,40] were carried out, up to now there are no studies quantifying the environmental impact of miscanthus pellet. In fact, despite some attention was paid on the last years to the environmental impact of pellet [41][42][43][44], up to now, the environmental impact of pellet produced from miscanthus was not investigated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pellet Production from Miscanthus: Energy and Environmental Assessment

et al. 2020

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The production of wood pellets has grown considerably in the last decades. Besides woody biomass, other feedstocks can be used for pellet production. Among these, miscanthus presents some advantages because, even if specifically cultivated, it requires low inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides and shows high biomass yield (up to 28 tons of dry matter ha−1 in Europe). Even if in the last years some studies evaluated the environmental impact of woody pellet production, there is no information about the environmental performances of miscanthus pellet production. In this study, the environmental impact of miscanthus pellet was evaluated using the Life Cycle Assessment approach with a cradle-to plant gate perspective. Primary data were collected in a small-medium size pelletizing plant located in Northern Italy where miscanthus is cultivated to be directly processed. The results highlight how the miscanthus pellet shows lower environmental impact compared to woody pellet, mainly due to the lower energy consumption during pelletizing. The possibility to pelletize the miscanthus biomass without any drying offsets the environmental impact related to the miscanthus cultivation for all the evaluated impact categories (except for Marine eutrophication). In detail, for global warming potential, 1 ton of miscanthus pellet shows an impact of 121.6 kg CO2 eq. (about 8% lower respect to woody pellet) while for the other evaluated impact categories the impact reduction ranges from 4 to 59%. Harvesting, which unlike the other field operations is carried out every year, is by far the main contributor to the impacts of the cultivation phase while electricity is the main contributor to the pelletizing phase.

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Life cycle analysis of small scale pellet boilers characterized by high efficiency and low emissions

Cited by 37 publications

References 28 publications

Life Cycle Assessment of a Commercially Available Organic Rankine Cycle Unit Coupled with a Biomass Boiler

Life Cycle Assessment of a Commercially Available Organic Rankine Cycle Unit Coupled with a Biomass Boiler

Potential of Integrated Emissions Reduction Systems in a Firewood Stove under Real Life Operation Conditions

Pellet Production from Miscanthus: Energy and Environmental Assessment

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