The feasibility co-firing biomass for electricity in Missouri

Abstract

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT AUTHOR'S REQUEST.] With the growing concerns regarding energy security, sustainability and global warming, more and more efforts have been expended to find clean, safe and renewable energy sources. Bioenergy is considered as one of the significant potential energy resources to serve as a partial replacement for fossil fuels. Use biomass as fuels to produce electricity, i.e. biopower, is one of the most popular uses of bioenergy. The main objective of this study is to investigate the feasibility co-firing biomass for electricity at the existing coal-powered plants in Missouri. A linear programming model was built to simulate the whole process of co-firing biomass in 9 selected power plants with the objective of minimizing the total cost involved in the process. Two biomass co-firing levels (10% and 15%) with three levels (10%, 20% and 30%) of biomass availability are assumed to conduct sensitivity analysis. Moreover, this study also analyzed the impact of transportation cost, resource and harvesting cost on the model's optimization outcomes. The results of the model show that co-firing biomass in those selected power plants costs more than using coal. The additional cost from co-firing biomass will decrease as the availability of biomass increases. The results from the individual plants show that the optimal capacity of biomass co-firing is about 10-15MW based on the settings of this study.