An integrated gasification plant for electric power generation from wet biomass: toward a sustainable production in the olive oil industry

Abstract

This research work proposes an integrated gasification plant for simultaneous generation of renewable electricity and drying of olive pomace, a thick sludge with a moisture content close to 60–70% (wet basis), which constitutes by far the most abundant by-product in the Spanish olive oil industry. Due to its massive rate of production and increasing associated transportation costs, olive pomace management currently represents a substantial expense for oil mills. The integrated gasification plant, which can be installed directly at oil mills, consists of a pelletizer, a downdraft gasifier under autothermal operation fueled with dried olive pomace pellets, a producer gas cooling and cleaning unit and a microturbine as power generation unit. The wet olive pomace continuously produced in oil mills is eventually dried in a co-current flow rotary drum dryer with the hot exhaust gases leaving the microturbine at temperatures close to 300 °C, allowing a self-sufficient operation of the integrated gasification plant. The integrated gasification plant was modeled using Aspen Plus® process simulator. The developed model was validated against experimental and simulation results of relevant works. Under optimum operating conditions, the electrical efficiency of the proposed plant is 18.8%, while the additional drying stage allows achieving an overall efficiency of 51.0%. Electricity consumption by the pelletizer and ancillary equipment represents 10–20% of the net electric power generation from the microturbine. However, since the integrated gasification plant is fueled with an inexpensive by-product of olive oil production that is massively produced on-site, the plant performance parameters are remarkably satisfactory.

Fast-growing native tree species to the secondary forest of East Kalimantan, Indonesia: Physicochemical properties of woody materials for bioelectricity feedstocks

“…Excellent performance of biomass-based electricity has been reported earlier (González et al 2015). Furthermore, it has also been successfully developed in many countries in the world, such as in Brazil (Ferreira 2018), Finland (Majava et al 2022), Ghana (Präger et al 2019), India (Narnaware and Panwar 2022), Japan (Battuvshin et al 2020), Portugal (da Costa et al 2020, Spain (Aguado et al 2022), and United States (Broughel 2019).…”

Simulation of Olive Pomace Gasification for Hydrogen Production Using Aspen Plus: Case Study Lebanon

“…These physiochemical properties of the olive pomace are presented in Table 3. It should be mentioned that the sulfur content is recorded in the organic section, indicating that the sulfur is only thought to be organic [45]. Given that both conventional and non-conventional components are present simultimeously, the global stream class is classified as "MIXCINC", where "MIX" indicates the "MIXED" substream, "CI" connotes "CISOLIDS", and "NC" is the non-conventional substream [43].…”

Techno-Economic Assessment of an Off-Grid Biomass Gasification CHP Plant for an Olive Oil Mill in the Region of Marrakech-Safi, Morocco

“…The presence of impurities in the producer gas can lead to severe fouling and corrosion issues to all mechanical equipment, which in turn involve a decreased overall efficiency and increased maintenance costs [8]. Therefore, including a producer gas conditioning unit was essential to limit the presence of impurities such as dust and tars in the producer gas before being supplied to the engine-generator set [20].…”

“…In Europe, the continuous two-phase extraction process is most widely used, mainly because of its reduced water consumption. Two-phase decanters are used in this oil extraction process, where olive pomace is massively obtained as the main by-product-a thick sludge made up of olive pulp and crushed pits [8]. However, the most commonly used process for olive oil production in North African countries is the three-phase extraction process.…”