Residual Biomasses in the Micro-Region of Dourados (Ms): Assessment and Availability for Energy in Agriculture Thermal Conversion

Abstract

This research presents results of the assessment of solid biofuels (residual biomasses from agricultural crops) in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, in the period 2007-2012, for energy in agricultural uses. It is pointed out the available quantity, its geographic location at micro and meso regions and energy conversion potential. The methodology is based on a survey on municipal agricultural production of the Brazilian Institute for Geography and Statistics (quantity and local availability, per year) followed by determination of the amounts of agricultural assessed residues, and then applying equations from the literature to estimate the amount of energy (J) and power (kW) obtained from the thermal conversion of residual biomasses. Results are presented for three residual biomasses from agricultural crops (corn cobs, rice husk and sugarcane bagasse) with cartograms for all micro regions at the state of Mato Grosso do Sul, graphics for quantification in the cities where crops production occurs and a table for total energy obtained by conversion processes. For the whole state of MS, Dourados micro region was identified as the most promising for energy in agriculture with three main cities (Dourados, Rio Brilhante and Maracaju), by solid biofuel availability to provide about 11% of the total electrical energy consumption in 2014.

Corn harvest residues for co-generation assessment: availability at Mato Grosso do Sul State, and energy characteristics

“…Figure 3 (right side). Total energy achieves equivalent to ~3.5.10 6 GJ Thermal or ~2 GW Electric by thermoelectric power-plants, it represents ~0.7% of the 2014 amount of electrical energy consumption in the whole state (SILVA et al, 2017). It is possible to increase energy and power generation if the biomass torrefaction process is to be considered previously to combustion (CHEN et al, 2014;SATPATHY et al, 2014), or even via gasification process (DU et al, 2015) -in this case obtaining gas biofuel that also can be stored.…”

“…For assessment of thermal energy obtained from residual biomass, we consider a methodology analogous to the one proposed for rice (husk) by the Brazilian Reference Center on Biomass -CENBIO, and others (SILVA et al, 2017), see Eq. ( 9).…”

“…Availability of residual biomass for a power plant is assumed to be with 95% of operation hours annually (8322 h.year -1 ); minimum process efficiency is considered, η = 15% (boilers operating at 2 MPa or 20 bar), in a low-efficiency thermodynamic cycle (SILVA et al, 2017). Conversion to S.I.…”

“…A significant amount of residual biomass occurs in agro-industries (SILVA et al, 2017), thus adding value to these co-products is a relevant economic aspect to consider. Typically they are not used as food, such as husks (from rice and coffee), straw and bagasse (from sugarcane), husk leaf, and cob (from corncob).…”