Willow firing in retrofitted Irish peat plant
- Utrecht (Netherlands)
- DuQuesne ltd., Dublin (Ireland); and others
Interest in biomass electricity in Ireland is being re-awakened by environmental concerns about CO{sub 2} emissions from power generation and the potential of biomass production to provide an alternative agricultural enterprise. The technical and economical feasibility of wood-fuelled power production using willow from energy farming in existing peat-fired plants in Ireland is being studied within the framework of the EU JOULE II+ programme. These options are compared with new combustion plants and a biomass integrated gasifier with combined cycle (BIG/CC). Background studies supplied data for yields of willow farming, establishment of willow plantations, harvesting methods, logistics and costs and efficiencies for different retrofit options at Irish peat plants. All technologies considered are currently available or are expected to be available in the near future. Neither agricultural subsidies nor possible CO{sub 2} taxes have been included. In the least cost supply scenario storage and chipping of wood is done at the power station. In this case wood is only stored in the form of sticks and wood harvested by a chips harvester is supplied to the plant directly during the harvesting season. Fuel costs at the plant gate were estimated between 3.3 and 11 EGU/GJ{sub LHV}. This wide range resulted in a wide range of kWh costs. For the lowest cost option they ranged between 5.4 and 15 ECUcents/kWh. The cheapest proven retrofit option is the conversion of the existing milled peat Lanesborough unit 3 into a bubbling fluidized bed with kWh costs ranging from 5.6 up to 16 ECUcents/kWh. For this plant, costs per tonne of avoided CO{sub 2} emissions varied between 1 and 70 ECU. It is noteworthy that the kWh costs for all options considered were very close. Especially in the high costs scenario a BIG/CC appeared to have lower kWh cost than all biomass combustion plants. Mainly for the retrofitted plants the fuel costs were by far the largest kWh cost component.
- Research Organization:
- National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
- OSTI ID:
- 115272
- Report Number(s):
- NREL/CP-200-8098; CONF-9508104-; ON: DE95009230; TRN: 95:006736-0053
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: 2. meeting on biomass of the Americas, Portland, OR (United States), 21-24 Aug 1995; Other Information: PBD: [1995]; Related Information: Is Part Of Second biomass conference of the Americas: Energy, environment, agriculture, and industry. Proceedings; PB: 1741 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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