Industrial Symbiosis Centered on a Regional Cogeneration Power Plant Utilizing Available Local Resources: A Case Study of Tanegashima

Abstract

SummaryPlant-derived renewable resources have the potential to enable the simultaneous generation of high-value-added products, such as foods, with energy, such as electricity and thermal power. Much of the heat cogenerated from renewables in power plants has been discarded because of the geographical and temporal gaps in heat supply and demand. In this study, we aim to devise an effective industrial symbiosis (IS) for a regional combined heating and power (CHP) plant utilizing local renewable resources. For the actual region of IS, the island of Tanegashima in Japan was adopted, where sugarcane is planted as a base industry. Through a thermodynamic analysis of the energy flows in a sugar mill, it was demonstrated that large amounts of heat were discarded from the sugar mill, even though the quality of heat was high enough for power generation or other energy demand. This is partly because some of the renewables have been regarded as wastes in the production of foods or other high-value-added products. At the same time, scenarios were defined and analyzed on the integrated use of locally available lignocellulosic biomass to increase the operation ratio of an existing bagasse-based CHP system. Through both periods with and without sugar production, additional heat and power can be made available by decreasing the energy loss and through IS. Keywords:bagasse boiler and power generator heat and power industrial ecology island system renewable resources sugarcane Supporting information is available on the JIE Web site

Application of technology assessments to co-learning for regional transformation: a case study of biomass energy systems in Tanegashima

“…The results show that increasing the production of sugarcane can increase the raw sugar exported from Tanegashima and that starting molasses-derived ethanol production can decrease the fossil resources imported to Tanegashima (Ouchida et al 2017). Those results, related to the revitalization of sugarcane industries, a core of culture on Tanegashima, have become the transition narratives in Tanegashima and have motivated the additional analyses on locally available biomass resources, such as residues from forestry used for fuel during the nonsugar season (Kikuchi et al 2016a). Such resources from the primary industries necessitate collaborations between public organizations, such as the agricultural and forestry cooperatives.…”

“…The material and energy flows were analyzed by LCA as adopted in the previous papers for the cane sugar mill (Kikuchi et al 2016a), agricultural and industrial processes (Ouchida et al 2017), and forestry on Tanegashima. The primary role of analyzing material and energy flows is to clarify the changes in life cycle inventories associated with technology implementation.…”

“…Several energy system projects have been launched on Tanegashima. The cane sugar mill can produce power and heat for the regional energy systems using surplus bagasse (Ouchida et al 2017) and available woody biomass (Kikuchi et al 2016a). A cultivar bred for combined sugar-ethanol production can increase their productivity.…”

Simulation-Based Approaches for Design of Smart Energy System: A Review Applying Bibliometric Analysis

“…The gap between microand macro-scopes should be addressed by interconnecting both models as a kind of mesoscopic modeling, the achievements of which can become region-wide models. There are many types of the definition of region in existing simulation approaches; for example, city (e.g., Robinson et al, 2009), urban energy systems (e.g., Rager et al, 2013), urban network for energy carrier (e.g., Niemi et al, 2012), neighborhood (e.g., Orehounig et al, 2015), district, (e.g., Baetens et al, 2012), microgrid, (e.g., Lambert et al, 2006), and island (Kikuchi et al, 2016b). In the region of such studies, varous energy facilities and technologies are dispatched to meet the demand of power and heat considering socioeconomic conditions (Keirstead et al, 2012); for example, renewable energy sources are connected through multi-carrier energy networks containing central and decentralized CHP, photovoltaic, wind turbine, and electric vehicles considering hourly heating and electricity demand (Niemi et al, 2012), and different energy conversion technologies are integrated for designing a system such as photovoltaic to building electricity, wood to building heat or district heating, and so on .…”

A region‐specific environmental analysis of technology implementation of hydrogen energy in Japan based on life cycle assessment

“…Region-specific characteristics have a strong influence on the implementation effects because regions in a country have different characteristics in terms of resource availability, climate conditions, existing equipment for energy use, current energy mix, and environmental conditions (Min, Azevedo, & Hakkarainen, 2015). Model-based simulations and optimizations have been applied to the analysis and design of energy systems considering region-specific characteristics (Agnolucci & McDowall, 2013), for example, industrial symbiosis with combined heat and power on the island of Tanegashima in Japan (Kikuchi, Kanematsu, Ugo, Hamada, & Okubo, 2016) and an energy system in an Italian Alpine valley (Mahbub, Viesi, & Crema, 2016). Scale and location designs of facilities by optimization models were performed in France (De-León Almaraz, Azzaro-Pantel, Montastruc, & Boix, 2015) and in the United Kingdom (Samsatli, Staffell, & Samsatli, 2016).…”