Techno-economic assessment of pellets produced from steam pretreated biomass feedstock

Published Date
Biomass and Bioenergy
April 2016, Vol.87:131–143, doi:10.1016/j.biombioe.2016.03.001
Research paper

• Author 

• Hassan Shahrukh ^a
• Adetoyese Olajire Oyedun ^a
• Amit Kumar ^a,,
• Bahman Ghiasi ^b
• Linoj Kumar ^b
• Shahab Sokhansanj ^b,c

• aDepartment of Mechanical Engineering, 10-263 Donadeo Innovation Centre for Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, T6G 1H9, Canada
• bDepartment of Chemical and Biological Engineering, 2360 East Mall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, V6T 1Z3, Canada
• cEnvironmental Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, 3783, USA

Received 21 July 2015. Revised 27 February 2016. Accepted 1 March 2016. Available online 10 March 2016.

Highlights

• •
  Production cost based per unit mass shows a higher gap than cost per unit energy.
• •
  Economic optimum size of steam pretreated pellet plant is higher than regular plant size.
• •
  Production cost increases with decrease in capacity and increase in capacity factor.
• •
  Production cost is more sensitive to moisture and biomass production per unit area.

Abstract

Minimum production cost and optimum plant size are determined for pellet plants for three types of biomass feedstock – forest residue, agricultural residue, and energy crops. The life cycle cost from harvesting to the delivery of the pellets to the co-firing facility is evaluated. The cost varies from 95 to 105 $ t⁻¹ for regular pellets and 146–156 $ t⁻¹ for steam pretreated pellets. The difference in the cost of producing regular and steam pretreated pellets per unit energy is in the range of 2–3 $ GJ⁻¹. The economic optimum plant size (i.e., the size at which pellet production cost is minimum) is found to be 190 kt for regular pellet production and 250 kt for steam pretreated pellet. Sensitivity and uncertainty analyses were carried out to identify sensitivity parameters and effects of model error.

Keywords

Biomass

Pellets

Techno-economic model

Production cost

Steam pretreatment

Economic optimum size

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• ∗ 
  Corresponding author.
  
  

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