Development of an Innovative and Sustainable Model for Integrating River Maintenance with Energy Production from Residual Biomass

Barbara Marchetti, Francesco Corvaro, Fabio Polonara and Mariella Leporini
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Barbara Marchetti: Facoltà di Ingegneria, Università degli Studi eCampus, Novedrate 22060, Italy
Francesco Corvaro: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona 60131, Italy
Fabio Polonara: Construction Technologies Institute, National Research Council (CNR), San Giuliano Milanese, Milan 20098, Italy
Mariella Leporini: Dipartimento di Ingegneria Industriale, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona 60131, Italy

Resources, 2018, vol. 7, issue 2, 1-23

Abstract: This study aims to develop an innovative model for managing territory maintenance in which the productive function is linked with the protective one and that integrates environmental and economic development aspects, combining the energetic valorization with an effective territory maintenance program. The strong innovation consists in the creation of an agro-energy environment chain based on the maintenance of river basins and small waterways made by single farmers or associations that will use residual biomass to produce electrical and thermal bio-energy. The maintenance activities include the control of aquatic weeds, grass cutting on river banks, and tree/bush management. If left unmanaged, they can block the flow of watercourses and increase the risk of flooding. The implementation of this virtuous model to the rivers maintenance aims to provide management and conservation means based on the territory characteristics. In fact, the new model has been applied to an existing site in the Marche region (Italy) located near a river characterized by a poor state of maintenance. A real commercial system for residual biomass exploitation was chosen, and both the technical and economic feasibility of the model implementation have been demonstrated.

Keywords: bio-energy; agro-energy; biomass; floods prevention; gasification; river maintenance; sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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