Bioenergy solutions for today and the future

Jean-Bernard MICHEL

ABSTRACT
This paper provides an analysis of the biomass energy conversion systems with a short review of existing market solutions and some current technological development which may result in a better overall efficiency and economy. Three different process categories are distinguished, namely the thermo-chemical, physico-chemical and biological conversion processes. The first category is still, by far, the most developed and used at all scales from the domestic heating stove to the large power plants. Developments are presented in the area of small scale CHP systems, microalgae production, torrefaction, gasification and anaerobic digestion. Keywords: biomass energy, CHP, anaerobic digestion, torrefaction, gasification.

INTRODUCTION

In most countries of the modern world, energy from biomass is not completely exploited. According to several sources, biomass energy amounts today to about 10% of the world total primary energy consumption whereas in India it represents 32% of all the primary energy use in the country (see Figure 1). For power production, India reports a total capacity of around 1 GW today and is planning to increase it by 10 times by 2020, so there is still an enormous potential to be exploited by different routes and at different scales, from the small combined heating and power (CHP) systems to the large cogeneration plants. There exist many routes to biomass conversion and utilization as illustrated in Figure 2. The techno-economic aspects will depend very much on the feedstock availability and cost as well as on the government policies and financial incentives. The three main families of conversion processes, thermo-chemical, physicochemical and biological, are discussed in the following sections.

Figure 1: Evolution of Total Primary Energy Supply in India (after IEA) [1]

Thermochemical

combustion torrefaction pyrolysis gasification liquid fuel Press/ extraction Motor/ Gas turbine F-.T gaseous fuel Hot air turbine Solid fuel
boiler

Heat

steam

Physicochemical

Power

Esterification

Fuel cell

Biological

Fermentation/ hydrolysis Methanisation

transport biofuel

Figure 2: various pathways for biomass conversion into energy (simplified)

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Thermo-chemical processes

This process family comprises combustion, torrefaction, pyrolysis and gasification which also includes charcoal production.

2.1 Biomass combustion and closed thermal cycles

Amongst all biomass conversion processes biomass combustion is certainly the simplest and most mature technology. In its traditional utilization for heating and cooking, it had been the major source of energy of mankind until the 19th century. It is now also becoming a very significant source of energy in the modern world, who strives for the replacement of the depleting fossil fuel reserves and for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. Larger biomass thermal power generation plants (> 30 MWth) are now a mature and reliable technology. A thorough review is available in [2] and we will not provide further details. See also Table 1. Table 1 Closed thermal cycles for CHP with biomass, adapted from [2] Working medium Engine type Typical size 500 kWe 500MWe 25 kWe-1.5MWe 1.5 kWe, 15 kWth Not established Status Proven technology Proven technology From Button Energy (see further) Liquid and vapour Steam turbine (with phase change) Steam piston engine Steam piston engine Steam screw engine

One demonstration plant with 730 kWe Estimated range from and turbine from 500 kWe-2 MWe commercial screw compressor Some commercial plants with biomass Development and new commercial solutions Development pilot Development pilot and and

Steam turbine with 200 kWe 1.5 MWe organic medium (ORC) Scroll turbine with 10 100 kWe ORC Gas (without phase Externally fired hot > 100 kWe change) air turbine Stirling engine 1 kWe 100 kWe

The emphasis today lies in the development of combined heat and power production (CHP) at small and medium scales, for single family houses with a few kW overall capacity, and also for medium size district plants (2 10 MWth, 200 -1000 kWe). Conventional steam cycles are not really adapted for small scale operation mainly due to cost considerations. Currently three main types of small scale CHP from biomass are promising: Small power with steam cycle and piston engine: for example a recent development made by Button Energy in Austria includes a pellet fired boiler, a double floating piston engine 3/22

and a linear motor. Nominal steam conditions are about 350C at 25-30 bars. Thermal power varies from 3 to 15 kW and electric power from 0.3 to 1.5 kW. Such units are being sold in Switzerland by the company Rieben Heizanlagen AG. Thermal oil boilers coupled to an Organic Rankine Cycle, for example: o The company Turboden in Italy for units greater than 400 kW o GMK and Adoratec in Germany for units above 500 kW o Eneftech in Switzerland for units of 30 kWe [3] Until recent years ORC power plant had not demonstrated their economic feasibility for units smaller than 200 kWe. The Eneftechs ORC module is designed to produce electricity from relatively low-temperature heat sources (below 200C). The miniaturized unit provides 30kWe, and the modular design makes it perfect for a biomass fired boiler Brayton cycle with an externally fired hot air turbine. Closed-cycle externally fired gas turbines have been known since the 50s but they do not seem to have met commercial success. For example a 1 MW peat fired boiler from the John Brown Company is given as an example by H.U. Frustschi in [4] On the opposite, open cycle systems have been recently reported as a possible route to CHP from biomass and several developments are ongoing on this process [5, 6] Such CHP systems seem to be a very appropriate solution for small power applications due to their potential flexibility in accepting various biomass qualities, as opposed to gasification processes that are very sensitive to the type and quality of biomass. However, small scale combustion system will be faced with more stringent regulation in the future, especially with regard to particulate emissions. Fly ash from wood combustion is extremely fine (mean diameter around 0.3 mm) and contains poly-aromatic hydrocarbons which can be effectively reduced by appropriate filters and catalysers, similar to those used on diesel exhaust gases. This is being demonstrated by an on-going project in the Industrial Bioenergy Systems laboratory [7] With the instability of fossil fuel prices and electricity and their ineluctable increase, it is quite certain that biomass fired small scale CHP systems will spread in the near future.

2.2 Biomass pyrolysis and gasification

Significant progress has been achieved recently to increase the reliability of pyrolysis and gasification plants. Unfortunately, medium to large scale commercial wood gasification plants have not yet significantly penetrated the market in Europe mainly because of the high cost and complexity of wood gas treatment and purification to the level required for CHP. There are very few known commercial plants and extensive developments are still on-going at the pilot scale, as demonstrated by the great number of articles published in recent years. Once cleaned from tar components and pollutants (sulphur and chlorine components), wood gas is mainly composed of carbon monoxide, hydrogen, methane and carbon dioxide. A very comprehensive effort is carried out on wood gasification as part as the IEA task 33 Thermal Gasification of Biomass [8] and a lot of useful reports and presentations can be found on their web site. The case of the Gussing (AU) demonstration plant has been cited by many authors as a reference plant. More recently in Austria, two plants were put into operation; their main characteristics are provided in Table 2. 4/22

Table 2 Main characteristics of Austrian pilot and demonstration gasification plants Plant Started continuous operation Wood consumption (tons/year) Fuel input Electrical capacity capacity (MW) (MWe) 8 8.5 15 2 2.8 3.9 Thermal capacity (MWth) 4 4.1 6.7

Gussing Oberwart Villach

2002 2009 2011

Not stated 20000 33000

In 2008 Gssing has been extended to upgrading wood gas to synthetic natural gas (BioSNG), via a water shift process (CO H2) and a methanisation process (H2, CO, CO2 CH4) The plant produces about 300 m3/h of wood gas, resulting in a BioSNG flow of about 120 m3/h. Another BioSNG pilot plant is planned in Villach as part as an Austrian funded program.

Figure 3 Gussing process flow diagram However, it has been reported that IGCC is more suitable at large scale (> 50 MWe) due to the complexity of the plant and the high investment costs [9]. At the scale of the above mentioned projects, the economic viability can only be achieved with government support in the form of subsidies for the investment costs and/or feed-in tariff policies. On the contrary, small scale biomass gasification plants have been much more widespread in India. As a matter of fact, it is an Indian company who supplied a pilot plant in Wila (Switzerland) which served as a basis for two other plants in Switzerland. In 2003, a report 5/22

states that there were 1817 biogas gasification plants in India for a total of 55 MWe, i.e. an average of 30 kWe by plant [10]. This is in contrast to the findings of the IEA task 33, with 68 CHP plants in 2011 in their data base of which 23 in the USA.

2.3 Biomass torrefaction

Biomass torrefaction on the other hand, consisting of a mild pyrolysis under reducing or neutral conditions and operating in the range of 230-300 C, has found a great interest in many countries, and large industrial plants are being built or have been recently commissioned. Torrefaction provides a number of technical and economical benefits due to the densification of energy content and the hydrophobic behaviour of the torrefied biomass. Known reported projects and commercial plants are mainly located in Europe and USA with about 12 plants in Europe from 5-50 tons/year and 8 plants in North America from 35000 to 110000 tons/year. [11] Several types of technologies are reported (when known): Rotating drum, 7 projects Screw conveyor, 4 projects Vertical plug flow reactor (counter-flow), 3 projects Oscillating moving bed, 2 projects Multiple earth, 2 projects Fluidised bed swirling flow, 1 project Microwave reactor, 1 project

2.3.1 Biomass torrefaction project at the University of Applied Science in Yverdon-les-Bains (CH)
The Industrial Bioenergy Systems group led by the author has been pioneering R&D in the field of torrefaction at the small scale since 2008 with a first study on the combustion and life cycle evaluation of torrefied wood pellets. The work has been reported elsewhere [12] and the main conclusions of this theoretical and experimental study where that: There was no need to adjust the operating conditions of a boiler designed for normal pellets. The combustion behavior of the torrefied pellets was found very similar to that of the normal pellets with an improvement in the combustion characteristics (warm-up period, thermal efficiency) The overall life-cycle-impact from wood harvesting to useful energy can be reduced by 50% as compared to normal pellets.

In 2012, a new project was started aiming at the design and construction of a 600 kg/h demonstration plant using biomass residues which are otherwise incinerated or used for compost. At first, laboratory experiments have been carried out on a small scale batch reactor (Figure 4, left) with 500 g samples of various biomass types and varying operating conditions (flow temperature, heating time and biomass residence time).

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Figure 4 Photographs of the batch laboratory torrefactor (left) and the 20 kg/h torrefaction pilot First results are given in Table 3 below showing a great variation in the potential increase of high heating value (HHV) depending on biomass type and torrefaction temperature. The maximum increase of HHV up to 28% for wood chips at 245C temperature during 13 minutes. The effect of chip size was not found significant. One can also see that anaerobic digestion wastes, which are of no value, can be upgraded significantly by torrefaction. Table 3 Results of torrefaction of various biomass sources
Biomass type Torrefaction temperature (C) Torrefaction duration (minutes) Forest wood chips 245 (coniferous/deciduous) Tree trimmings Tree trimmings Anaerobic digestion lignocellulosic wastes Anaerobic digestion lignocellulosic wastes Anaerobic digestion lignocellulosic wastes Conifer wood chips Conifer wood chips Conifer wood chips length < 6 mm Conifer wood chips length < 12 mm Conifer wood chips length < 25 mm 250 260 210 244 230 260 250 250 250 250 30 10 15 20 7 25 20 20 20 20 21.5 21.5 16,3 20.4 12.3 20.2 20.2 19.9 19.9 19.9 21.2 22.9 15.8 18.7 13.2 20.1 20.4 21 20.6 20.4 21.7 19.9 3.9 33.4 burnt 14.6 7.6 9.13 10.8 9.2 13 19.7 25.2 56 HHV raw material (MJ/kg dry) HHV Mass loss torrefied material (% dry matter) (MJ/kg dry)

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Then a 20 kg/h continuous reactor was built (Figure 4, right) as an intermediate step to the 600 kg/h demonstration plant, foreseen to be built in 2013. A preliminary economic evaluation was also carried out with various feedstock input and market prices. Depending on the type of biomass and energy prices, it was found that plant capacities between 5000 and 20000 tons/year could be viable, with a break -even return on investment of 3-5 years.

Physico-chemical processes

The second family concerns mainly the transport biofuels such as biodiesel or bio-ethanol. This family requires a so-called energy crop which can be rich in oil content such as Jatropha curcas, rapeseed or microalgae for biodiesel or in lingo-cellulose and sugar content for ethanol production. However, the limitation resigns first in the very low efficiency of solar conversion to biomass. Zhu and co-authors calculated the theoretical maximal photosynthetic energy conversion efficiency for C3 plants of 4.6% and for C4 plants of 6% C4 based on the total initial solar energy and the final energy stored in biomass. The conditions were a leaf temperature of 30C and an atmospheric [CO2] of 380 ppm. In most crops, real efficiencies are about ten times lower i.e. about 0.5%. [13]. For example, with a yearly cereal production of 10 tons/hectare and a calorific value of 5 kWh/kg and a yearly solar radiation of 18000 MWh/hectare, the gross efficiency is 0.27%. The further conversion into biodiesel by transesterification (10% loss) and into power (70% loss), would thus result in a net efficiency of 0.07%. This figure should be compared with the efficiency of solar power systems (concentrated photovoltaics or concentrated thermal), on the order of 25 % and we immediately can conclude that the use of arable land should be used for food production rather than for biofuel production. However, until the times where solar power and wind power systems will be widely implemented, biodiesel seem to be a good alternative to fossil fuels for transport in specific cases provided that the sustainability of the production has been thoroughly examined. One of the most productive plants, Jatropha curcas is reported with yields about 3 tons/hectare of oil in India, whereas soybeans yields only 375 kg per hectare in the United States and rapeseed yields about 1 ton per hectare in Europe. On the other hand, microalgae seem a very promising feedstock for future bio-diesel production. Contrarily to agricultural crops, they can be produced in non arable areas, either in open pond or closed systems. In the case of microalgae cultivation with a rich CO 2 feed, efficiencies of up to 5 % have been reported. This opens the way for a complete new concept of bio-refineries which will be able to produce nutrients and materials for the chemical and pharmaceutical industry and energy. A study was carried out the University of Applied Science Western Switzerland in 2008 on the potential production of biodiesel and power from microalgae at [14]. This included a review of existing processes reported in the literature for the main three categories: Open-pond systems (Raceway) with a production of about 36 to 72 tons per hectare per year and oil content of 40-50% Tubular systems with a production of about 126 to 144 tons per hectare per year Photobioreactors (PBR) of high productivity reported with yields of 288 to 360 tons per hectare and per year. 8/22

The interesting aspect of PBR is their ability to be fed with the exhaust from thermal power plants, rich in CO2 and their very rapid growth (doubling volume every day). The study was made with a yearly production of 80 tons of oil per hectare under Swiss climatic conditions and with the assumption of indigenous microalgae. For a plant of 800 t/y (10 ha) the investment cost was estimated at about 9166000 , the operation cost at 250000 , resulting into a biodiesel cost of 1.46 /kg. Theoretically, the productivity can be much higher, depending on climatic conditions and microalgae strain. In February 2010, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced the large-scale production oil from algal ponds into jet fuel with a cost of biodiesel less than $3 a gallon (0.79 $/litre). A larger-scale refining operation, producing 50 million gallons a year, is expected to start in 2013, with the possibility of lower per gallon costs so that algae-based fuel would be competitive with fossil fuels. [15] In India, there is a national program for Jatropha cultivation to reduce its dependency on fossil fuel by 20% by 2017 but the production is far below expectation due to economic considerations and the reluctance of the investors due to the inherent uncertainties of this market.

Biological processes

The third family concerns mainly biogas production from organic wastes, biogas purification to methane and injection in the natural gas network or biogas combustion in CHP plants. The author presents below a new concept of automated small scale anaerobic digester being developed within the framework of a project financed by the European Union.

4.1 Waste processing with anaerobic digestion

The most common process for organic waste processing is known as anaerobic digestion. Extensive literature exists on the subject and several reviews are available [16, 17, 18] so we will only summarize some of the key features here. There exist three main regimes of anaerobic digestion, characterized by their range of temperature: psychrophilic conditions as in ponds, from 10-25C, mesophilic conditions as in the stomach of mammalians from 30-37C and thermophilic conditions from 48-55C

In practice, however, only the two latter are commercially developed and widely used because the yield of the psychrophilic is too low to be exploitable and the so-called hydraulic retention time (defined by the ratio volume of digester to input flow rate) would be too high. A second classification can be made between: Dry and wet processes Horizontal (plug-flow) and vertical (stirred) reactors

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is suitable for the treatment of all kinds of organic wastes; except for ligneous wastes, most agricultural and agro-food industrial wastes can be digested. In Switzerland and many other countries, the wastes from water treatment plants are also processed to produce biogas and electricity. Most farm biogas installations operate in mesophylic conditions whereas industrial systems often use thermophylic operation (for example Kompogas and BRV/Linde) 9/22

In simple terms, AD equipment consists of a waste conditioning system, a thermo-regulated digester tank, a gas holder to store the biogas, and a gas-burning engine/generator set, if electricity is to be produced. The organic waste is broken down in the tank and 40-90% of this waste is converted into biogas; the rate of breakdown depends mainly on the nature of the waste. The biogas has a calorific value typically between 50% and 70% of that of natural gas and can be combusted directly in modified natural gas boilers or used to run internal combustion engines. Apart from biogas, the process also produces a digestate, i.e. the residue from the digester which may also be separated into liquid and solid components. The liquid element can be used as a fertilizer and the solid element may be used as a soil conditioner or further processed to produce higher value organic compost. Alternatively it can also be torrefied for pellet production. The biogas production occurs in a series of biological transformations which are, of course, strongly coupled with the local conditions of the environment i.e. temperature, pH, local composition and concentration gradients, particle size, bacterial population, enzymatic activity etc. One parameter has been found to be extremely important for a good digestion: the Carbon/Nitrogen (C/N) ratio of the feedstock with an optimum in the range of 20 30 based on biodegradable organic carbon. If the C/N ratio is very low this leads to the accumulation of ammonia and pH increase. A pH value above 8.5 will start to show a toxic effect on the methanogenic bacterial communities. To maintain the C/N ratio at acceptable levels, materials with high C/N ratio such as meat wastes can be co-digested with those with a low C/N ratio which are higher in nitrogen such as municipal sewage or animal manure. Anaerobic digestion can be described in four main process steps, schematically shown in Figure 6: 1. Hydrolysis 2. Acidogenenis 3. Acetogenesis 4. Methanogenesis, which is coupled with acetogenesis and acidogenesis by syntrophy. Anaerobic digestion modelling started in the early 1970s when the need for design and efficient operation of anaerobic systems became obvious, this led to the so-called ADM1 model, widely used in the scientific world [17]

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Figure 5 : Methanogenesis synthrophy processes (after Aragno [19]) In the first phase of hydrolysis, aerobic bacteria transform the heavier organic substances (such as proteins, carbohydrates, fats, cellulose) into simpler molecules such as sugar, aminoacids, fatty acids and water. This is a slow process that depends on pH and retention time. In the second phase of acidification, acidifying bacteria decompose the intermediate products into short-chain fatty acids such as acetic, propionic and butyric acids as well as carbon dioxide and hydrogen. Small quantities of lactic acid and alcohols are also produced. 11/22

During the third step of acetogenesis, other anaerobic bacteria such as acetobacterium produce acetic acid, carbon dioxide and hydrogen, which are necessary for methane production in the fourth step of methanogenesis. About 70% of the methane is produced from acetic acid and therefore this is a rate limiting step. The other 30% are produced from hydrogen and carbon dioxide. This reduces the hydrogen concentration which would otherwise inhibit the acetogenesis. In modern installations there are two separate zones, allowing to separate the first two steps from the last two and to adapt the local conditions to the needs of the bacteria and to obtain better conversion efficiencies.

4.2 Economics and limitations of existing products 4.2.1 The case of rural areas in Asia
The case of Asian countries and that of western countries has been very different until now: in rural India and China for example, the digesters are relatively small (6-10 m3 vessels) for use in farms, communities, and in some cases hotels, processing some 10 to 100 kg/day of wastes such as manure, food wastes, crop wastes etc. they are quite labour intensive but their operation is rather simple.

Figure 6 : Biogas promotion poster produced by the Khadi and Village Industry Commission after [20]

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Such systems have been used in developing countries for over a century [21]. Small scale vertical digesters with volumes of up to 100 m3 are widespread In India and China. According to Plchl [18], three major types of digesters have emerged in developing countries: the Chinese fixed dome digester and the Indian floating drum digester (see Figure 6) and very recently, tube digesters. The floating dome digester is fed semi continuously and has a relative high depth to width ratio. Therefore a wall is placed in the middle of the digester to prevent short-circuiting (direct substrate flow from the inlet to the outlet) [22]. According to Lawbuary in 2000 [23], there were thought to be about 2.5 million biogas plants installed around the country but this represented only a minor fraction of the energy use for cooking. Two independent studies indicated that between 12 and 30 million household-size plants could be installed over the subcontinent, and nearly one community-size plant for each village underlining the enormous potential for anaerobic digestion systems. Subsidies have been granted on plants up to 10 m3 (a large family-sized system) though there may be regional differences. Several constraints were found to limit the expansion of these systems: - Provision of space and of water (to be added to cow dung) - Availability of subsidies to reduce the high investment cost - Difficulty for the workers, mainly women, to handle large volume of dung (often more than 1000 kg/day) The author recently visited a biogas plant next to a hotel in Thiruvrananthapuram, processing the hotel wastes and other local agro-wastes. The hotel owner was very satisfied with the plant as it allowed him to reduce his energy consumption and he reported no problems of operation. In this state, half of the total expense for installing biogas plants in homes will be given as subsidy by the Government [24] with a maximum of 35 Lakhs (49000 Euros). These biogas projects are installed as part of the Garbage Free Kerala initiative. Under this, only 25% of the total cost needs to be paid by the investors. In total a 75% grant will be given to the Garbage treatment plants run by Panchayaths, 50% by the Government and 25% by Panchayaths.

4.2.2 The case of industrialized areas

In highly industrialized areas of western countries, higher labour costs do not make it possible to have an economically viable solution below 4000 tons/year of waste, corresponding to a farm with 60 cow equivalent and with a digester tank volume of about 400 m3. This is more than 10 times the critical threshold of Asia. Even in that case, it will be necessary to use additional sources of organic waste such as restaurant wastes. A techno-economic review was made by the ORIF association in France of existing plants from various technologies [25]: Dranco and Vallorga: vertical, dry Kompogas and BR/Linde: horizontal, dry BTA, vertical, wet

The investment costs of these systems are plotted as a function of plant size on Figure 7. 13/22

Another study Beck reports similar values [26] as shown in Table 4. One can see that the specific cost in /ton decreases with plant size which is to be expected in industrial plants. Also the cost spread between various plants appears to be very large and to depend on the plants characteristics.

Figure 7 : Investment costs (Million ) in 2003 as a function of the processing capacity (103t/year) of biogas plants after [25] Table 4 Investment costs as a function of the processing capacity of biogas plants in 2004 after [26] (in 2004, 1 $ corresponds to approximately 1.2-1.3 )

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Large facilities for biomechanical treatment, biogas production and/or compost production, require large occupied areas, and, in the case of biogas production, require also ensuring maximum profitability of all generated energy. This is possible where district heating systems are already built, but require large investments where a new system must be built. Another solution is to refine the biogas in order to produce methane and inject it into the natural gas grid but again, this is currently only profitable for large plants, processing more than 20000 tons/y of waste (e.g. Kompogas plants). In fact the profitability threshold for such plants depends very much on the local conditions. In most cases, the only alternative for processing smaller quantities of wastes, where a large digestion plant is not available in the area, is to incinerate them. In such cases water can be first extracted by mechanical methods but the wastes still contain high moisture content and are of no energetic value to the incinerator. The anaerobic digestion of organic fraction of municipal solid wastes (OFMSW) has been intensively studied and both dry [total solids (TS) content 30 40%] and wet (TS around 10%) anaerobic process modifications have been developed and demonstrated to be technically feasible. Those reactor technologies are applied commercially for medium to large scale applications e.g. BRV (horizontal, rectangular plug flow reactor; dry, Linde licence), BTA (vertical, stirred reactor, wet), Kompogas (one-stage, horizontal plug flow design, dry), Dranco (vertical plug flow reactor, dry), ROM (mixed sequential batch reactors), WELtec BioPower (Vertical, stirred reactor, wet). Most of these systems are applied to centralised waste processing plants with capacities of more than 5000 t/year and are often linked to a cogeneration plant with electric power capacities greater than 100 kWe. An economic analysis of centralized biogas plants (22 Danish manure based plants) has shown that economic balance in large facilities can be achieved when the average biogas yield is higher than 30 m 3 of biogas/m3 of biomass (approx 20 m3 of CH4/m3 of biomass) [27]. Coincidently, several studies have shown that for capacities <5000 t/year, anaerobic digestion is not economical for power generation. However, this depends very much on the disposal cost of the waste on the one hand and the selling price of electricity to the grid on the other hand. For many applications, the heat production can be used locally e.g. for heating or hot water production and on-site biogas production becomes profitable [28, 29]

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Figure 8: Input-output diagram of a conventional digestion facility The on-going GreenGasGrids European project has reported the number of biogas plants in Europe including those with biogas upgrading and injection into the grid [30] See Table 5. This is 3-year European project funded by the Intelligent Energy for Europe (IEE) programme with the aim to boost the European biomethane market. The project will run until mid 2014 and its goal is to contribute to the European Renewable Energy Directive (RED) targets of 20% renewable energy and 10% renewable energy in transport in 2020. Table 5 Number of biogas and biomethane plants in several European countries [30]

As for many new renewable energy power generation plants, the economic viability of power from biogas is very dependent upon the government support for investment and feed-in tariffs. For instance, in the case of Austria, the basic tariffs subsidies vary from 18.5 and 13 cent per kWh depending on the size (18.5 cent/kWh if less than 250 kW, 16.5 cent/kWh from 250-500 kW and 13 cent/kWh above 500 kW)

4.3 The ORION European funded project

ORION stands for ORganic waste management by a small-scale Innovative automated system of anaerobic digestion. It is a European funded project (seventh framework programme) just started in 2012 under the scheme Research for the benefit of SME associations 16/22

SME agro-food industries have to manage large quantities of organic waste, the industry produced nearly 240 Million tons of organic waste in 2006 [31]. The project goal is to develop a small automatic user-friendly digestion machine that enables the domestic on-site treatment of a wide range of organic waste from about 100 up to 5000 tons per year at low cost (50 per ton) and with low maintenance. We have seen in the previous section that such a system does not exist at this small scale and at low cost for investment and maintenance. The project groups together 22 partners: 7 SME associations, 9 R&D partners and 6 SMEs. The SME associations are based in 6 different countries (Belgium, UK, Spain, France Turkey and Switzerland) and representing 7 different sectors of SMEs, in particular: biomass, agrofood industries (fisheries, vegetable oil producers, dairy, and cattle) markets and hotels. The SMEs involved in this project have to manage from 100 tons to 3000 tons a year. However, the only solutions currently available for these SMEs organic waste treatment are landfill and incineration which imply a grouping of the waste before treatment and so require intermediate storage and/or waste transport (as most fish processing plants are located in remote areas); as such, SMEs must face high costs of waste treatment: storage costs in cool areas, specific transportation costs and finally costs for incineration or recovery. The cost of disposing of this waste varies per country but the price in Europe varies from 50 to 200 per ton. The possible routes for waste elimination are summarized in Figure 9, together with the associated problems. On average, restaurants produce about 250 g/meal of food waste with a large variation in quantities depending on the type of restaurant. Hospital restaurants and school canteens tend to generate greater quantities. For a large canteen serving 1200 meals/day, the amount of food wastes is about 110 tons/year. This represents a cost of: - 25 /ton for handling, grinding and storage on-site - 100 150 /ton for transport management, biological treatment, landfills or incineration fees (depending on the region) Until recent years it was possible to feed pigs with restaurant wastes but this is no longer allowed in Europe because of sanitary risks and animal disease outbreaks. The trends indicate that organic waste disposal costs will continue to increase because of more stringent legislative regulations so there is a great incentive to find alternative solutions.

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Landfills

Composting units

Not allowed anymore in the EU and several countries. Causes many environmental problems Not applicable for putrescible wastes such as meat, fish or starch wastes Expensive solution High energy consumption, emission of NOx and of SO2 Only applicable where large waste quantities are generated in the area.

Agro-food waste treatment

Incineration plants

Anaerobic digestion plants > 5000 t/y

Automated small scale digesters

Need to be commercially developed The main objective of the ORION project

Figure 9: The different routes for agro-food waste treatment Past and future The innovations of the project will reside in two main categories: Diagnostic and control tools and sensors: Monitoring and control are important strategies for achieving a better process stability and higher conversion efficiencies in anaerobic digesters. In addition to the common indicators for the monitoring of the biogas process, novel types of sensors will be used for on line detection volatile fatty acids), ammonia, and hydrogen. The objective will be to optimize digester operation and to prevent failures on-line. The development of local and remote maintenance strategies and of process improvement strategies is therefore an important part of the project. The overall control architecture proposed comprises three levels as outlined in Figure 10 1. Low level controls and diagnostics. Safety is ensured here by the use of fail-safe processes. 2. Maintenance (local and remote) and complete diagnostics (full or detailed). 3. Supervision and process improvements.

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Supervision and process improvements

Upload data

Automatic digestion System Client B

Parameters reconfiguration

Automatic digestion System Client A

TCP/UDP-IP interactions

Automatic digestion System Client C

Low level controls and diagnostics

Maintenance local or remote Full or detailed diagnostics

Figure 10 Proposed control architecture of the ORION system In this way, the operation of the system will be made very easy and transparent for the enduser, who will see what can be called an Intelligent Waste Bin. Such a scheme should make it possible to prevent biological breakdown by early remediation Prevention of biological breakdowns is a complex issue that is not yet solved satisfactorily in existing systems. As a matter of fact there are several cases of severe biological breakdown to the point where it was not possible to recover (complete system inhibition), and where the digester content had to be removed (sometimes with heavy mechanical means). Biological breakdowns may be provoked by four main causes: accidental temperature change inappropriate composition of the substrate accidental addition of poisoning or oxidative compounds breakdown internal to the biomass (e.g. occurrence of bacteriophages)

What is required for an automatic AD system and proposed in the current project is: a. An early prevention of biological breakdowns. b. A remote maintenance scheme with a specialised company Optimization of the anaerobic digestion system design and operation. The system to be designed will be based on the retention of solids (solids substrate and biomass) in the reactor by an internal settlement device using the Digesto concept [32] as shown in Figure 11. It will be improved by using a fixed bed system (biofilm) in the internal 19/22

area occupied by the liquid fraction. A specific innovation of this project will be the development and testing of different types of microstructured surfaces to improve the immobilization and structuring of the syntrophic microbial community.

A tank (1) for an apparatus for receiving and conditioning organic waste by anaerobic bioconversion, in particular, waste produced by restaurant kitchens and other facilities, includes a main enclosure wherein bioconversion takes place, and a secondary enclosure (18) for receiving and storing ground organic waste before it is transferred to the main enclosure for completion of its bioconversion. A hopper (4) or other device for receiving the organic waste is associated with a grinder (2) and is connected to the secondary enclosure (18) of the tank for feeding the ground organic waste. A recirculation system (12, 15) for recycling the contents of the tank includes a pump (13), means for distributing (17a, 17b) the contents of the main enclosure between the different levels thereof, and separate means (9, 22) for removing solid residues and liquid waste.

Figure 11: Digesto concept with internal solid/liquid separation after [32]

Conclusions

There are many different pathways to the generation of heat (and cold) and power from biomass sources. Biomass energy in its traditional utilization for heating and cooking had been for many years the major source of energy of mankind. It is now becoming a very significant source of energy in the modern world, which strives for the replacement of the depleting fossil fuel reserves and for the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions. In the area of heat and power production, pre-processing and combustion of biomass will still be the dominant energy conversion process in the following decades with the further development of small scale CHP systems with indirectly turbines (ORC or hot air). Torrefaction of biomass, which is a mild pyrolysis at temperatures below 300C allows to increase the technical and economical value of the feedstock without additional energy other than the biomass itself. The hydrophobic character and higher heating value of torrefied products make them a very promising alternative to raw biomass. We thus can foresee that biomass torrefaction systems will enable to process and store biomass and biomass residues locally, and open the way to trade and transport these new biomass fuels at much larger scale as today, in a similar way to coal trade. Gasification of biomass appears to be a very complex process to operate and has not really found its way to large implementation in Europe. However, a lot of small biomass gasification projects are reported in India and it would be worthwhile to evaluate and compare the technological differences, which was not the purpose of this paper. 20/22

Regarding the production of biofuels from energy crops, the common solar to biomass conversion efficiency is very low and requires 20-60 times more land as compared to thin film photovoltaic. This is the reason why, in the authors opinion, only the third generation biofuels (such as microalgae) can provide sustainable solutions that do not compete with agricultural crops. Such solutions can also be combined effectively with other energy conversion processes such as concentrated thermal power generation. Biofuels for transport have nevertheless a cost advantage, especially when using non agricultural land or residues from various sources (forest, agricultural, food industry). Improvements are foreseen in the raw biomass conversion efficiency which today is on the order of 0.5-2% whereas the maximum theoretical conversion efficiency is 4.6% for C3, and 6% for C4 photosynthesis under average climatic conditions. In this respect, the high yield biomass production processes such as Jatropha Curcas or algae are a better alternative to the cereal cultivation. In the case of microalgae cultivation with a rich CO2 feed, efficiencies which are close to 5% have been reported. Finally, biogas production from various organic biomass sources, such as animal manure, waste water sludge, food wastes etc. is seen to increase in most countries. Developments are still required to improve plant reliability, efficiency and automation as well as cost reduction on smaller scales through production in series. This is the purpose of a three years European project which is starting in 2012.

Bibiography and web references

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