IEA Bioenergy Task 22: Techno-economic assessments for bioenergy applications 1998-1999: Final report

In the IEA Bioenergy Tasks 22 the objectives were: · to conduct analysis of bioenergy systems to support organisations working with products and services related to bioenergy · to build and maintain a network for R&D organisations and industry · to disseminate data on biomass conversion technologies. The IEA Bioenergy techno-economic resources have been maintained and improved since original studies in 1982. State-of-the-art, performance, and feasibility analysis of biomass to · (heat and) electricity (CHP) · liquid, gaseous, and solid fuel systems · chemicals from biomass have been carried out. Technical and economic feasibility studies were carried out for several biomass power and fuel conversion technologies in Austria, Canada, Finland, Sweden and the United States during 1998-1999. Brazil was also a participant in the task. The core technologies analysed include: · a flue gas condensing system for increased heat production integrated to a biomass boiler · the production of slow release fertilizers from fast pyrolysis liquids · small-scale steam boiler power plant compared to new concepts · fast pyrolysis liquid production for district heat production within a city, and · small modular biomass power systems. Performance (mass and energy balances) of systems are determined rigorously, and the economic assessment will be carried out with companies supplying or planning to use these systems. The companies, whose technologies or sites are considered, have been selected by the funding agencies in the countries participating in this task. The participants have found the results of the first one and half years valuable, and have agreed to continue the task during the year 2000. Additional cases will be analysed during year 2000. The collaboration has proved to be a cost effective way to generate necessary techno-economic base data to be used in supporting decision making in R&D.