Biomass supply to a coal power plant under sustainable development conditions

Abstract

Nowadays, biomass residues of wood forests have no specific application in many areas of the world. Wood forest can be a bioenergy supplier to substitute the use of fossil fuel. The forest area owns residues when the cleaning is not carried out in a periodic way, mainly because the management of residue is very complicated as a consequence of the orography. This work aims to improve existing methods and develop new ones for evaluation and utilization of forest wood residue from cleaning and thinning in accordance with the safety and environmental requirements of the biomass feedstock in a coal power plant for a sustainable industry. This implies an analysis of both the resources and the existing limitations for a proper valuation considering technical and environmental restrictions. The potential forest residues existing in the studied area can contribute to reduce the fossil fuel dependence. The potential feedstock for the coal power plant is 90 dry kt/year, which is equivalent to 24 MWe and generates 165 kt/year of CO2 neutral emissions.