Title:
Sustainable Biofuels via Biomass Gasification Towards Fossil-free Aluminium Production
Author(s):
Aimone, L., Flórez-Orrego, D., Dardor, D., Germanier, R., Maréchal, F.
Document(s):
Paper
Poster
Abstract:
Currently, the use of woody biomass for industrial energy applications competes directly with its use for domestic heating in Switzerland. Utilizing biomass at low temperatures for household heating not only increases CO2 and particulate emissions but also reduces overall conversion efficiency. Conversely, biomass gasification offers a promising alternative to decarbonize industrial productions, such as secondary aluminium, and to capture and sequester biogenic carbon, aiming for an overall negative carbon balance. This study evaluates the techno-economic feasibility of a biofuels production plant integrated with an aluminium cast house and rolling plant in Switzerland. First, biomass potential and availability are investigated along with the transportation and purchasing costs for the chosen site. Subsequently, the study explores the energy integration between the biomass conversion processes and the aluminium plant. This phase includes modelling a biomass gasifier, various syngas upgrading processes, and furnace technologies (conventional and oxy-fuel combustion of SNG furnaces, and H2 furnaces). A MILP problem is solved to carry out a multi-objective optimization to find the economically optimal configurations at different CO2 reduction thresholds at three levels of carbon tax.
Keywords:
economics, gasification, modelling, synthetic natural gas (SNG), decarbonisation, aluminium
Topic:
Industry Track
Subtopic:
Advanced biofuels
Event:
32nd European Biomass Conference and Exhibition
Session:
IDV.3.12
Pages:
909 - 916
ISBN:
978-88-89407-24-0
Paper DOI:
10.5071/32ndEUBCE2024-IDV.3.12
Price:
FREE
