Ligno-cellulosic biomass exploitation for power generation: A case study in sicily

During the most recent years, among the different forms of renewable energy sources, biomass is playing an important role in the strategic agenda of European Community. Many countries, including Italy, have introduced important incentive schemes to support the use of biomass for electricity, heat and transportation. This has raised considerable interest towards the use of biomass for energy production. Nonetheless, the investment on biomass fuelled power plants presents several critical issues, such as choice of feedstock composition, economic viability with regard to plant size, access to locally available biomass and price of feedstock. This case study attempts at an evaluation of the economies originated by a small scale (<1 MWel) Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) turbine coupled with a biomass fuelled boiler, fed by residual biomass from local cultivations, located in a rural area of a typical Mediterranean semi-arid environment in inland Sicily. A Geographical Information System (GIS) was used as a tool to assess the power plant economic viability with respect to local biomass availability and localization. Plant financial viability was evaluated for a number of different scenarios based on power plant size, number of yearly operational hours, feedstock mix and price.