Small scale bio-chp systems. Pilot plant approach

Abstract

Nowadays, renewable energy sources aim at reaching the changes required to address the impact of global warming, alleviate poverty and replace conventional fossil fuel energy sources. Biomass has a promising future as a renewable source of energy that can supply the demand of a modern society in industrialized and developing countries. This work is focused on small scale biomass gasification as the alternative for distributed power generation from different types of biomass sources and it tries to avoid technical, financial and institutional problems in a 15 kg·h-1 pilot plant with downdraft fixed-bed gasifier. At the same time, it pretends to improve the overall energy efficiency of the system under the CHP concept, which it currently is between 15 to 25%. Gas quality represents one of the key parameters for a successful operation of the system and the presence of particles and tars is usually one of the main barriers to overcome. To achieve the removal of these contaminant compounds, an efficient system to clean the producer gas is expected to be applied in the UPC pilot plant. Furthermore, a complex remote real time monitoring and control system is under development which will lead to adequate operation performance.