Economic study of water steam production by biomass or domestic waste incineration
Multi-scale and/or multi-disciplinary approach to process-product innovation
Analysis of Energy Issues (T3-3a)
Keywords: Biomass, domestic waste, incineration, water steam
Reducing greenhouse emissions to stabilize the carbon dioxide cycle is nowadays a priority. In order to use clean energy sources, an economic and potential study of water steam production by incinerating biomass and domestic waste has been carried out. Biomass presents non-negligible Heating Values (HV) for heat exchange in incineration units and low emissions of carbon dioxide. Besides, domestic waste incineration reduces municipal waste discharges and contributes with high energy recovery. For both sources, water steam production would be coupled with High Temperature Electrolysis (HTE) process for hydrogen production.
The economic study of hydrogen production by HTE is based on investment and operation costs of waste incineration units. The main hypotheses are: total steam conversion into hydrogen and oxygen molecules in electrolysers, units of hydrogen production going from 180 to 3600 kg per hour, furnace investment as a function of combustible HV and nominal mass rate, total unit investment as a function of furnace investment, operation costs related with combustible nominal mass flow, rate of refunding of 6%, refunding period of 20 years and water steam temperature going from 350 to 550°C. The steam production cost has been evaluated for real annual mass rates, considering an average heat transfer of 80% in the furnace.
Two kinds of combustibles (biomass) have been evaluated: wheat straw and pine tree wood. Different HV, depending on combustible composition and humidity, added to mentioned hypotheses result in a steam production cost going from 1.93 to 4.08 euro cents per steam kilogram. At present, waste incineration presents steam production costs going from 3 to 5.3 euro cents that would be diminished to costs going from 2 to 3.5 by 2020. In the French context, the annual wheat straw waste reaches almost 1.5 Mtep and the non-harvested wood almost 3.32 Mtep. Water steam produced using both biomass sources, and total conversion into hydrogen and oxygen could supply the needs of almost 50 millions hydrogen automobiles, avoiding deforestation and reducing important changes in actual agriculture surfaces. Also, predictions of steam production cost for furnace efficiency of 90%, by 2020, have been estimated.
See the full pdf manuscript of the abstract.
Presented Monday 17, 16:00 to 16:20, in session Analysis of Energy Issues (T3-3a).
