Biomass fuelled trigeneration system in selected buildings

Many buildings require simultaneous electricity, heating and cooling. Biomass is one of the renewable energy sources which is not intermittent, location-dependent or very difficult to store. If grown sustainably, biomass can be considered to be CO2 neutral. A trigeneration system consisting of an internal combustion (IC) engine integrated with biomass gasification may offer a combination for delivering heat, electricity and cooling cleanly and economically. The producer gas generated by the gasifier is used to provide electricity for building use via the IC engine. The waste heat is recovered from the engine cooling system and exhaust gases to supply hot water to space heating, excess heat is also used to drive an absorption cooling system. The proposed system is designed to meet the energy requirements for selected commercial buildings and district heating/cooling applications. This work focuses on the modeling and simulation of a commercial building scale trigeneration plant fuelled by a biomass downdraft gasifier. In order to use both energy and financial resources most efficiently, technical and economic analyses were carried out, using the ECLIPSE process simulation package. The study also looks at the impact of different biomass feedstock (willow, rice husk and miscanthus) on the performance of a trigeneration plant.

► We model a commercial building scale biomass fuelled trigeneration plant.
► It is economically feasible to use willow chips, miscanthus and rice husk as the fuel to operate the trigeneration system.
► The efficiency of TG is much higher than that of PO, but is lower than that of the combined heat and power (CHP) configuration.
► The breakeven electricity selling price (BESP) of the TG system is better than that of the PO option with the CHP option producing the cheapest electricity.