Biomass Co-firing

#GS-03 Environment

About Biomass Co-Firing:

Biomass co-firing is the practice of substituting a part of the fuel with biomass at coal thermal plants.

Biomass is plant or animal material used as fuel to produce electricity or heat. Examples include wood, energy crops and waste from forests, yards, or farms.
Approximately 32% of the total primary energy use in the country is still derived from biomass and more than 70% of the country’s population depends upon it for its energy needs.
However this number is slightly misleading as most of this represent inefficient and pollution causing fuels such as fire wood or cow dung.

Biomass co-firing stands for adding biomass as a partial substitute fuel in high efficiency coal boilers.
This process is done in the following steps:
Coal and biomass are burned together in boilers that have been designed to burn coal.
The existing coal power plant needs to be partly reconstructed and retrofitted in order to suit this function.

Co-firing is an option to convert biomass to electricity, in an efficient and clean way, and to reduce GHG (Greenhouse Gases) emissions of the power plant.
Biomass co-firing is a globally accepted cost-effective method for decarbonising a coal fleet.
Biomass co-firing can help to find a profitable solution to the problem of stubble which is causing massive air pollution in the NCR region.
According to experts Biomass can replace between 20% and 50% of the coal used in thermal power generation.
However currently India is aiming to replace 5-7 per cent of coal with biomass which can save 38 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions as well as millions in foreign exchange.

According to the ‘National Mission on use of biomass for coal thermal power plants’ set up by the Union Ministry of Power around 95,000-96,000 tonnes of biomass pellets are required per day for co-firing.
But India’s pellet manufacturing capacity is 7,000 tonnes per day at present even though a surplus 228 million tonnes of agricultural residue is available in the country.