Biomass-to-electricity conversion technologies: a review

Abstract

In order to promote the use of biomass as an alternative to fossil fuels, this review aims to survey the literature to identify technologies used to generate electricity from biomass. The main biomass conversion technologies, including combustion, biomass gasification, biomass pyrolysis, co-firing biomass with coal, anaerobic digestion and biomass fermentation, have been successfully used to generate electricity from different types of biomass. As opposed to fossil fuels, using biomass to generate electricity has a lower carbon footprint, which is eco-friendly over fossil fuels. This review introduces mature biomass-to-electricity technologies, compares the maturity of those technologies, identifies challenges that impede the use of the technologies to decentralise electricity supply from national grids, and then provides future perspectives and concluding remarks on the biomass-to-electricity conversion technologies with the potential to eliminate the shortage of electricity in remote settlements. The identified challenges that hinder the implementation of biomass-to-electricity technologies are low biomass collection efficiency, utilization of biomass which competes with low-cost fossil fuels, competition for land used for food production, and poor implementation of policies to encourage implementation of biomass-to-electricity technologies. In addition, the financial challenges can be significant as investment costs to establish advanced technologies for biomass energy systems can be relatively high, and ongoing expenses for regular maintenance and monitoring are also substantial to ensure optimal performance to mitigate environmental issues.

Graphical abstract