Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Set to Drive Biomass Demand

- by David App­le­yard, Sep­tem­ber 3, 2014, Cogen­er­a­tion and Onsite Pow­er Production

New analy­sis from the Inter­na­tion­al Renew­able Ener­gy Agency (IRENA) fore­casts com­bined heat and pow­er (CHP) and indus­tri­al heat demand are set to dri­ve glob­al bioen­er­gy con­sump­tion over the com­ing decade and more.

Accord­ing to Glob­al Bioen­er­gy Sup­ply and Demand pro­jec­tions, a work­ing paper for REmap 2030, glob­al bio­mass demand could dou­ble to 108 EJ by 2030 if all its poten­tial beyond the busi­ness as usu­al is imple­ment­ed. Near­ly a third of this total would be con­sumed to pro­duce pow­er and dis­trict heat gen­er­a­tion with a total of 47% going between heat­ing appli­ca­tions in the man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try and build­ing sec­tors. Bio­mass use in CHP gen­er­a­tion will be key to raise its share in the man­u­fac­tur­ing indus­try and pow­er sec­tors, IRENA says.

The trend towards mod­ern and indus­tri­al uses of bio­mass is grow­ing rapid­ly, the report notes, adding that bio­mass-based steam gen­er­a­tion is par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing for the chem­i­cal and petro­chem­i­cal sec­tors, food and tex­tile sec­tors, where most pro­duc­tion process­es oper­ate with steam. Low and medi­um tem­per­a­ture process steam used in the pro­duc­tion process­es of these sec­tors can be pro­vid­ed by boil­ers or CHP plants. Com­bust­ing bio­gas in CHP plants is anoth­er option already pur­sued in north­ern Euro­pean coun­tries, espe­cial­ly in the food sec­tor, where food waste and process residues can be digest­ed anaer­o­bi­cal­ly to pro­duce bio­gas, IRENA adds. A recent IRENA analy­sis (2014b) esti­mat­ed that three quar­ters of the renew­able ener­gy poten­tial in the indus­try sec­tor is relat­ed to bio­mass-based process heat from CHP plants and boil­ers. Hence, bio­mass is the most impor­tant tech­nol­o­gy to increase indus­tri­al renew­able ener­gy use, they conclude.

In indus­try, demand is esti­mat­ed to reach 21 EJ in the REmap 2030, up to three-quar­ters of which (15 EJ) will be in indus­tri­al CHP plants to gen­er­ate low- and medi­um-tem­per­a­ture process heat (about two-thirds of the total CHP out­put). In addi­tion to typ­i­cal CHP users such as pulp and paper oth­er sec­tors with poten­tial include the palm-oil or nat­ur­al rub­ber pro­duc­tion sec­tors in rapid­ly devel­op­ing coun­tries like Malaysia or Indone­sia where by-prod­ucts are com­bust­ed in rather­inef­fi­cient boil­ers or only in pow­er pro­duc­ing plants.

As a result, installed ther­mal CHP capac­i­ty would reach about 920 GWth with an addi­tion­al 105 GWth of stand-alone bio­mass boil­ers and gasi­fiers for process heat gen­er­a­tion could be installed world­wide by 2030. This is a growth of more than 70% in indus­tri­al bio­mass-based process heat gen­er­a­tion capac­i­ty com­pared to the Ref­er­ence Case.

Bio­mass demand for dis­trict heat­ing will reach approx­i­mate­ly 5 EJ by 2030 while the pow­er sec­tor, includ­ing fuel demand for on-site elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion in build­ings and on-site CHP plants at indus­try sites, will require approx­i­mate­ly anoth­er 31 EJ for pow­er gen­er­a­tion (result­ing in the pro­duc­tion of near­ly 3,000 TWh per year in 2030, accord­ing to IRENA.

The total installed bio­mass pow­er gen­er­a­tion capac­i­ty in Remap 2030 reach­es 390 GWe. Of this total, around 178 GWe is the pow­er gen­er­a­tion capac­i­ty com­po­nent of CHPs installed in the indus­try and dis­trict heat­ing sectors.