Techno-Economic and Environmental Assessment of Power Supply Chain by Using Waste Biomass Gasification in Iceland

Abstract

In this paper, technical, economic and environmental assessments are carried out for power supply chain by using timber and wood waste (T&WW) gasification in Iceland. The Icelandic municipalities were clustered into 35 subgroups based on various number of households/ inhabitants. Different expenses were taken into consideration, like capital, installation engineering, operation and maintenance costs and the interest rate of the investment. Regarding revenues, they come from the electricity sale and the fee paid by the Icelandic municipalities for waste collection and disposal. The economic feasibility was conducted based on the economic indicators of net present value (NPV) and discounted payback period (DPP), bringing together three different scenarios, with interest rates of 8% for Scenario 1, 10% for Scenario 2 and 13% for Scenario 3. The environmental analysis was also performed relied on the environmental impacts of global warming (GWP), acidification (AP) and eutrophication (EP) potentials. The results show that changing the interest rate does not have significant impact on NPV and DPP for all studied scenarios. NPV is positive for the municipalities with more than 150 inhabitants or for a gasification plant with the capability to generate greater than 45 kW. Moreover, electricity generation based on T&WW gasification would lead to a GWP of 13 tonCO 2eq (Subgroup 1) to 469 tonCO 2eq (Subgroup 35), AP of 173.6 tonSO 2eq (Subgroup 1) to 6187.2 tonSO 2eq (Subgroup 35) and EP potential of 331.9 tonNO 3eq (Subgroup 1) to 11,827.7 tonNO 3eq (Subgroup 35), yearly.

Techno-Economic Analysis of Power Production by Using Waste Biomass Gasification

“…The combination of these two modules represents the behavior of a combustion engine where the reaction with air occurs[13] [14]. The inputs values and key assumptions used in this work are based on our waste biomass gasification simulation model developed by ASPEN Plus[8] and the main values of the downdraft gasifiers characteristics, operational parameters and the flue gas composition are relied on our previous work[15].…”

Biomass‐based gaseous fuel for hybrid renewable energy systems: An overview and future research opportunities

“…They found that a gasification‐based power plant is more attractive and economical in comparison to combustion‐based power plants. The biomass gasifier model, with the help of Aspen Plus software, has been developed by Safarian et al 67 to investigate the effect of biomass type (timber and wood) on output, and the biomass gasifier energy system's electrical efficiency was found to be very sensitive toward moisture content. Arena et al 68 have done a comparative analysis between gas turbine and IC engine‐based biomass gasifier energy system for electricity production in the range of 100 to 600 kW.…”

Simulation and Performance Analysis of Integrated Gasification–Syngas Fermentation Plant for Lignocellulosic Ethanol Production

“…Garden waste is transferred from the waste fields to the preparation/pre-processing part, which is next to the gasification and ethanol production unit. The gasification process consists of drying, pyrolysis, combustion, and reduction [13,14]. Typically, the moisture in biomass ranges from 5-35%, which is reduced to lower than 5% through the drying process which occurs at a temperature of 100-150 • C. Then, in the pyrolysis step, biomass is heated (it is in the range of 200-700 • C) in the absence of oxygen; then, its volatile components are vaporized.…”