A modelling approach for the assessment of an air-dryer economic feasibility for small-scale biomass steam boilers

Fuel drying is an energetically and economically expensive pretreatment process, which may not be worth the investment in the case of small-scale generation plants. This paper presents an investigation on the air dryer feasibility to enhance the operation of biomass steam boiler. In the proposed approach, the external drying technology using preheated air and the biomass steam production system is modelled in terms of energy and an economical analysis. A focus is given to the system size influence on the dryer economic suitability: the smallest size of the biomass combustion system for which fuel drying is a suitable solution, from the economic point of view, is computed. In the computations, the heat used for drying is assumed to be part of the cost for operating the dryer and the thermal balance of the system is assumed to be previously verified. According to the model results, if the steam production plant operational time is above 8000 h/y, wood chips drying is feasible if the system size is larger than 1.78 tdaf/h of fuel processed.