Trends In Biomass: Opportunities For Global Equipment Suppliers In Asia
London -- Over the last 10 years, there has been a considerable change in biomass power generation in Asia
. Indeed, owing to the scarcity and cost of biomass fuel, most power plants are in fact designed for multi-fuel and travelling grate unconventional fuels. This creates several challenging issues in combustion and boiler maintenance, demanding improvised combustion technologies, modern fuel preparation and handling systems, for example.In the last decade, several new approaches to power plant implementation and technology have also been introduced. Despite these challenges, the regional potential for agricultural and wood based multi-fuel biomass power plants is very high and the market is attractive. The highest potential in Asia exists in the sugar sector, followed by palm oil, rice, and wood industries and multi-fuel biomass power plants.
The most common and predominant biomass power plant fuels used in Asia are: bagasse, palm shell, palm fibre, rice husk and travelling grate manufacturer wood waste. Apart from these fuels, unconventional materials such as empty fruit bunches, corn cob, cassava rhizome, coffee husk and such like are also increasingly being used.
Recently, the biomass fuel price in some parts of Asia has gone as high as US$60/tonne and this higher biomass fuel cost and unconventional biomass fuel usage is forcing developers to use more efficient multi-fuel boilers, turbines and peripherals. Efficient turbines with steam extraction for low and high pressure heat are also common these days.
Nonetheless, increasing demand for biomass fuel tends to lead to difficulties in projecting the availability of biomass fuels. And, even with multi-fuel boiler designs, there are cases where the fuel mix scenario changes from year to year. Such situations require advanced combustion systems to tackle varying fuel mix scenarios during the plants operational life time and the demand for such systems is very high. Project developers are thus being forced to look for innovative and creative approaches to reduce the initial investment cost and operational costs in order to make projects viable. As a result, those equipment suppliers with good engineering and design knowledge especially in the use of unconventional and multifuel operation are in high demand right across the region.
Biomass Combustion and Boiler Types
In Asia,travelling grate systems and reciprocating step grate systems are in major demand while fluidised bed combustion systems are also predominantly used in a few countries, but are not popular throughout the region. Vibrating travelling grate manufacturer systems are also in use at a few plants, but again, the technology has failed to gain widespread popularity. In addition, there are only a few installations of cyclonic combustion systems.
A decade ago, for new biomass power plants the most common steam cycle was in the range of 40 bar and 440C. But these days, however, with the cost of biomass fuels high, more and more importance is given to high pressure steam cycles to increase the overall power plant efficiency. Consequently, steam cycles of 110 bar and 510C are very common in new power plant projects.
Biomass Power Plant Capacity
The most common size of biomass power plants varies from industry to industry. In the sugar sector, for example, the most common power plant capacities are 1540 MW, while in the palm oil sector the range is 515 MW and in travelling grate the rice sector it is 5 MW or 10 MW. In wood industries, the typical size is 5 MW or 10 MW and in multi-fuel-fired projects the size ranges from 5 MW to 20 MW.
Smaller size power plant projects of less than 3 MW are not being tried much these days. Due to economies of scale the unit cost of investment ($/MW installed) for smaller scale projects is generally higher than that of a 10 MW scale project. As a result, such power plants are mostly viable only if replacing expensive diesel generation.
Power Plants In Water Scarce Areas
A typical 10 MW power plant requires around 1600 m3 of water for daily operations. Often such volumes result in approval delays from regulatory authorities and there is also a risk of planning rejection.
In water scarce areas, therefore, it is difficult to implement power plant projects using conventional designs. However, the travelling grate manufacturer use of air-cooled condensers, rather than water-cooled systems, means it is possible to implement a biomass power plant almost anywhere. Such air-cooled designs reduce the water requirement by around 80%, although the overall plant efficiency of the system is lower and the overall investment cost is higher. Consequently, air-cooled condensers are recommended only when considerable water scarcity issues arise.
Project Implementation
Though the project implementation cost is much lower with separate procurement of equipment compared with that of EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contracting, the project developers tend to go for an EPC approach in order to avoid dealing with the issues of warranty and other implementation delays. However, knowledgeable developers which have the capability to manage project implementation effectively prefer separate procurement to reduce the overall implementation costs.
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