WORKSHOP PROGETTO BLAZE demo
Biomass Low cost Advanced Zero Emission
ENEA ROTONDELLA 2019 10 10
Power production from biomass
Technological progress, perspective of development
Research Centre ENEA Trisaia,
Rotondella (MT), Italy
10 October
2019,
Residual biomass is
undoubtedly a resource that can be used for energy purposes. Its proper use can
meet sustainability and environmental impact criteria as well as contribute to
the achievement of the energy targets proposed by the EU strategies by 2030 and
2050.
Suitable for both the
production of heat and electricity with conventional combustion technologies,
important R&D programs have been promoted in order to develop more
efficient and economical production processes and supply chains, aimed at
exploiting residual biomass for electricity production. Among the various
technologies explored, gasification has certainly attracted remarkable
attention for its potential to combine technical and scientific aspects with
environmental and sustainability issues.
At EU level, the
actions promoted, including those to support production costs with incentive
policies, have enabled certain gasification technologies to reach the
industrialization and commercialization stage. These are technologies suitable
in particular to produce electricity in the small to medium range, i.e. in
support of the decentralized energy production model, thus favoring the
integration of a share of the production of electricity from biomass in the
national grids of different European countries.
The experience gained
through the operation of these technologies, the adjustment to specific
efficiency targets, typically linked to the use of internal combustion engines
for power production, together with technical-economic evaluations, lead to
evaluate that, unlike what happened for technologies based on other renewable
sources, gasification results in higher investment and management costs.
Thus the need to go
further, to continue to innovate and improve in order to be able to reach an alignment
of the costs of producing power from biomass with those achieved by
technologies based on other renewable energy sources, such as hydro,
photovoltaic and wind. Key elements to achieve this result in the case of
gasification are the ability to develop technologies as flexible as possible
with respect to the type of residual biomass feedstocks to be used and capable
of leading to significant increases in plant productivity, both in terms of
electrical and thermal efficiency, as well as of the annual producibility.
Funded within the EU
Horizon 2020 programme, the BLAZE project aims to achieve these targets and,
through the integration of gasification in fluidized beds with solid oxide fuel
cells (SOFC), seeks to develop an advanced and zero emissions technology for
cogeneration (CHP) by using biomass of low-cost and from
short chain. Reference range for power production, the sizes from small (25-100
kWe) to medium (0.1-5 MWe).
The project has also
the ambition to achieve investment and operating costs of about 4k€/kWe and
0.05€/kWh respectively, high energy efficiencies (50% electricity over the
current 20%), near zero gaseous and PM emissions. Electricity production costs
of less than 0.10€/kWh.
Starting from the specific aims of the BLAZE
project, this meeting takes the opportunity to bring to the same table the most
recent European projects focused on the subject, as well as experts on related
issues, to compare their experiences and points of view through which trigger
profitable synergies not only on the technological side, but also in
perspective and strategic vision.
