Drying of biomass for utilising in co-firing with coal and its impact on environment – A review

Munna Verma, Chanchal Loha, Amar Nath Sinha and Pradip Kumar Chatterjee

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2017, vol. 71, issue C, 732-741

Abstract: Coal is the most widely used primary fuel for energy generation but it emits toxic gasses after combustion. Whereas, biomass is a renewable energy source and it is used for environment friendly energy production. Biomass does not add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere because it absorbs the same amount of carbon in growing as it releases when consumed as fuel. Generally, biomass used for co-firing with coal includes wood and woody wastes, municipal solid waste, animal wastes, agricultural crops and their waste by-products, waste from food processing, aquatic plants and algae. The inherent moisture content in biomass decreases its heating value and it needs to be dried before using it for co-firing. The drying of biomass could be performed in various types of dryers and all of them have their own merits and demerits. This paper provides a detail review on the need of drying of biomass before co-firing, different technologies used for biomass drying, biomass co-firing to the existing coal fired power plants and the environmental benefits of biomass co-firing.

Keywords: Drying; Co-firing; Emissions; Biomass; Coal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S136403211631156X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:71:y:2017:i:c:p:732-741

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2016.12.101

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().