Thermal gasification of biomass technology developments: End of task report for 1992 to 1994

The widely recognised importance of biomass utilisation in controlling carbon build-up in the biosphere and the potential benefits of creating new industries and job opportunities, particularly in the rural areas, have added impetus to the development and commercialisation of advanced biomass energy conversion methods in some Western countries. The world-wide recoverable residues is estimated to be 31 exajoules per year, or 10% of global commercial use. The present biomass combustion power plants have efficiencies in the 15% to 20% range, with electricity costs in the range of US $0.065 to $0.08/kWh. In contrast, the advanced power-generating cycles utilising gasification have the potential for higher generation efficiencies, 35% to 40%, and lower costs of electricity, $0.045 to $0.055/kWh. The IEA Biomass Thermal Gasification Activity continued to promote information exchange among the nine participating countries, to ultimately commercialise biomass gasification. The Activity continued to monitor the latest developments in handling herbaceous feedstocks, pilot plant performance of advanced gasification processes, including hot-gas cleanup for demonstration and commercial design, and the testing of a close-coupled prototype gas turbine and a molten carbonate fuel cell. In addition, the participants conducted task studies on Biomass resources for gasification, Biomass feedstock preparation for gasification, Evaluation of biomass feeders, Strategies for sampling analysis of raw gas streams from gasifiers, Altholz gasification, MSW gasification, Hot-gas cleanup, and Combustion characteristics of LCV fuel gases.