Biomass - fired steam power co - generation system: a theoretical study

The theoretical performance of a biomass-fueled boiler/steam power co-generation system is investigated. The system performance is based on the known or assumed properties of the biomass fuel(its size, elemental composition, moisture content), energy content of the combustible constituents of the fuel, actual performance of a piston-operated-valve (POV) reciprocating engine and an alternator from earlier studies, and load profiles. Steam engine performance has been the subject of detailed studies at the Energy Research Center of the Australian National University (for example, Refs [1] and [2]), and these studies are referred to for steam engine performance for a given engine configuration. While the theoretical performance of a biomass-fired boiler is the major focus of this paper, experimental results from tests carried out on a sawdust-fired twin-chambered furnace/mono-tube boiler system are also addressed