Solar-Driven Biomass Pyrolysis Plant for Negative-Emission Biofuels Production
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.52825/solarpaces.v3i.2438Keywords:
Biomass, Solar Pyrolysis, Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), Bio-Oil, BiocharAbstract
As part of the Horizon Europe Project PYSOLO, this study focuses on the integration of a 10 MWTH fast pyrolysis plant with a solar tower system equipped with a rotary kiln particle receiver. Heated particles act as a particle heat carrier (PHC) for the endothermic pyrolysis process, enhancing flexibility and allowing continuous operation compared to directly heated solar reactors. The system’s design, techno-economic analysis and storage capacity optimization are performed considering two operation modes, solar-only and hybrid, in which biochar is combusted in absence of solar energy. Results indicate that, due to the rotary kiln flow regime constraints, its tilt angle has to be limited in a range between 0.5-2° to guarantee particles being in rolling mode, thus penalizing the achievable solar field optical efficiency. On the other hand solar-based pyrolysis can achieve carbon efficiencies close to 0.9 and, thanks to the carbon stored in biochar, net negative emissions equal to -27.05 and -19.45 kgCO2/GJOIL respectively in solar-only and hybrid mode. Moreover, as the pyrolysis section has the most relevant cost share, the system optimization pushes to maximise the pyrolysis plant operating hours (and thus the bio-oil production) to reduce the CAPEX impact on the Minimum Fuel Selling Price (MFSP). For this reason hybrid mode results in being the most convenient (i.e: MFSP of 25.71 vs 21.36 €/GJOIL).
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Copyright (c) 2025 Muhammad Ahsan Amjed, Marco Colombi, Juan Rincon Duarte, Clarisse Lorreyte, Gkiokchan Moumin, Matteo Carmelo Romano, Marco Binotti
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Accepted 2025-04-28
Published 2025-11-18
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European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency
Grant numbers 101118270