Site Specific Analysis of Advanced Biomass Power Systems

Site specific technical and economic feasibility studies have been carried out for several advanced biomass power and fuel conversion technologies. The advantage of site specific studies are that the appropriate biomass conversion technology can be matched to the bioenergy needs and resources available at a particular location. This enables the technical and economic benefits of various advancedbiomass systems to be realized. This paper presents the results of performance and economic evaluations undertaken for several sites in Austria, Canada, Finland, Sweden and the United States. Each site evaluation was based on local factors including the biomass resource availability and costs, the market and price for the biomass power fr fuel produced and the costs of building and operating thebiomass conversion system. The biomass conversion systems studies included: Pyrolysis to produce fuel oils for biolers and diesel engines (5-15 Mwe), Gasification (IGCC) to produce power for a pulp mill (40 Mwe), and small power production (100-500 kWe) using a Stirling engine. Comparisons were also made to several sites in the United States where studies of power production from biomass wereundertaken at various capacities. This study was part of the International Energy Agency (IEA) Bioenergy.