Economic and Environmental Performance of Biowaste-to-energy Technologies for Small-scale Electricity Generation

Abstract

Electricity is predicted to be the energy vector that will undergo major changes in the future, and a transition would be observed in the resources such as waste and residual biomass that we use to satisfy the energy demand. Therefore, this study aims to highlight the main economic and environmental performances of different biowaste-to-energy technologies for small-scale electricity generation by comparing the direct combustion of refined vegetable oil obtained from waste cooking oils (thermal pathway), anaerobic digestion of biowaste (bio-chemical pathway), and gasification of wood residues (thermo-chemical pathway). The economic analysis is mainly based on personal experiences in the energy sector and shows an overview of the performance in investment of combined heat and power (CHP) systems, ranging from 100 to 500 kW for a period of 20 years. The environmental assessment is conducted considering the life-cycle thinking approach using support from the openLCA software, product environmental footprint (PEF) data-base, and previous studies that have reported environmental inventory data from real industrial cases.