Design of a biomass power plant for burning date palm waste to cogenerate electricity and distilled water

Date palm trees (Phoenix dactylifera L.) produce approximately 40 kg of burnable waste including dried leaves, spathes, sheaths, and petioles annually. In this paper, the potential of date palm waste as a bioenergy source has been investigated. As a sample project, a power plant has been preliminary designed to simultaneously generate electrical power using a steam Rankine cycle and distilled water by the thermal desalination of seawater using a multiple effect evaporator. The results indicated that a small plant in Bushehr Province in southern Iran which burns 140,000 tons of waste annually can produce approximately 62 GWh of electricity in conjunction with 2.27 million tons of distilled water. This production is equivalent to 75 GWhe/year. Environmental assessments revealed that the use of this amount of biomass leads to a net green-house gas (GHG) reduction of 40,500 tCO2/year.