Optimal Level of Woody Biomass Co-Firing with Coal Power Plant Considering Advanced Feedstock Logistics System

Abstract

Co-firing from woody biomass feedstock is one of the alternatives toward increased use of renewable feedstock in existing coal power plants. However, the economic level of co-firing at a particular power plant depends on several site-specific factors. Torrefaction has been identified recently as a promising biomass pretreatment option to lead to reduction of the feedstock delivered cost, and thus facilitate an increase in the co-firing ratio. In this study, a mixed integer linear program (MILP) is developed to integrate supply chain of co-firing and torrefaction process and find the optimal level of biomass co-firing in terms of minimized transportation and logistics costs, with or without tax credits. A case study of 26 existing coal power plants in three Great Lakes States of the US is used to test the model. The results reveal that torrefaction process can lead to higher levels of co-firing, but without the tax credit, the effect is limited to the low capacity of power plants. The sensitivity analysis shows that co-firing ratio has higher sensitivity to variation in capital and operation costs of torrefaction than to the variation in the transportation and feedstock purchase costs.

Wood Biomass Resources in Poland Depending on Forest Structure and Industrial Processing of Wood Raw Material

“…The d placements shown in Figure 3 refer to the generation of post-industrial wood biomass. The manner in which raw wood moves depends on the efficient operation of the logistic chain and the effective function of the organisational subsystems [33][34][35]. The displacements shown in Figure 3 refer to the generation of post-industrial wood biomass.…”

Prospects of Sustainable Biomass-Based Power Generation in a Small Island Country

“…A model was built that can be used to identify wood biomass availability and cost characteristics for any region or country given the area's specific characteristics (Simon et al, 2021). In addition, several researchers discuss that biomass transport costs can take majority of the total FC and is an influencing factor in determining the cost-benefit analysis (Ko and Lautala, 2018;Li et al, 2021;Mohaghegh et al, 2021). In terms of siting of biomass power plant, (Li et al, 2021) analysis shows that if the transporting radius is less than 40 km, then economic costs are low, which (Schnorf et al, 2021) concurs and further find that for some cases, breakeven point is even reached as further as 400 km.…”

Consumer Preferences for Wood-Pellet-Based Green Pricing Programs in the Eastern United States

“…Production Tax Credit (PTC) is a federal tax incentive that allows up to USD 0.012 per Kwh of electricity generation in coal plants to be from biomass [15]. Despite this incentive, only 7.14% of the existing coal plants apply co-firing technologies as the PTC does not clearly specify co-firing guidelines [15,20], which underscores the importance of conducting further investigations into the low adoption rates of co-firing technology. Further, governmental intervention is required to make biomass co-firing economically attractive; we propose incorporating green pricing mechanisms to gain public support and increase the economic viability of co-firing plants.…”