Enhanced electricity production from rice straw

Developing an approach of electricity production can lead stakeholders to make proper and appropriate decisions in the future. This research proposes an integrated system of electricity production from biomass waste which could bring to both economic and environmental benefit. As case study, straw yield of rice is investigated. In this study, an enhanced integrated system of power generation is proposed. The integrated system consists of a torrefaction, entrained flow gasification, gas cleaning module, and combined cycle for power generation. As an effort to optimize the heat circulation and minimize the exergy loss throughout the proposed system, enhanced process integration technology (EPI) is also implemented. By adopting the EPI, the unrecoverable energy or heat in a single process can be recovered and utilized in other processes through process integration. Furthermore, the influences of torrefaction temperature to the total generated power and power generation efficiency are also investigated. Results of calculation and modeling show a very high energy efficiency of integrated system. A positive energy harvesting with the total power generation efficiency of about 43% can be achieved.