Techno-Economic and Environmental Assessment of Syngas Cleaning Solutions for Bioenergy Generation

The present paper deals with the process analysis of a biomass-to-electricity industrial plant. Starting from the process simulation by means of Aspen Plus software, this work discusses the technical, environmental, and economic performance of a biomass integrated gasification combined cycle (BIGCC) power plant. To enable a safe integration, a mid-to-high temperature cleaning system has been implemented to target reference inorganic contaminants that hinder the use of syngas in commercial applications, namely hydrochloric acid, and hydrogen sulphide. The actual effectiveness of the overall system has been evaluated by performing a holistic assessment of a 7 MWe BIGCC using hazelnut shells as biomass and equipped with sorbent reactors to remove the target contaminants before entering the power generation section of the plant.