IEA report - Biomass pre-treatment for bioenergy

IEA Bioenergy is pleased to announce today the release of its upcoming report, Biomass Pretreatment for Bioenergy.

This report summarizes the efforts of an inter-task project designed to demonstrate how the application of certain biomass pre-treatment technologies could make existing bioenergy supply chains more fuel flexible, more efficient, and more cost-effective.
By applying biomass pre-treatment activities such as washing, drying, sieving, leaching, or thermal pre-treatment to lower-grade biomass, industry will be able to expand its resource base and increase the flexibility of various conversion technologies.

These pre-treatment options could have significant benefits for the biomass industry, including:
• Enabling the use of lower-grade biomass for fuel conversion—broadening the supply of available biomass resources
• Producing fuels with greater volumetric energy density—reducing transportation costs and logistical challenges
• Converting biomass into fuels that are closer in characteristic to fossil fuels, which will reduce the need for power plants to build new infrastructure to use the fuels; these fuels will also have a lower impact on the plant’s overall performance.

This report will summarize the findings of five case studies that show the added value of biomass pre-treatment for certain resources and end user applications:
1. Biomass torrefaction
2. Moisture, physical property, ash, and density management as pre-treatment practices in Canadian forest biomass supply chains
3. Pre-treatment of municipal solid waste (MSW) for gasification
4. The steam explosion process technology
5. Leaching as a biomass pre-treatment method for herbaceous biomass: sugar cane trash and palm oil mill residues

IEA Bioenergy hosted a webinar on this topic in conjunction with the Canadian Institute of Forestry earlier today. You can view a recording of this webinar here.

More information about this report is available on IEA Bioenergy’s website.

The IEA Bioenergy Technology Collaboration Programme (TCP) is organised under the auspices of the International Energy Agency (IEA) but is functionally and legally autonomous. Views, findings and publications of the IEA Bioenergy TCP do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the IEA Secretariat or its individual member countries.

For inquiries, contact: pbuckley@odbtbioenergy.com