Adoption of strategies for clean combustion of biomass in boilers

Abstract

Abstract Fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas are continuously being used for electricity generation. However, combustion of fossil fuels has raised environmental concerns which have forced the world to search for alternative sources of energy like geothermal, solar and biomass energy. Biomass is a carbon-based fuel, readily available in many parts of the world, highly volatile with less sulphur and nitrogen content, its ash possesses the property of absorbing carbon dioxide emissions, co-firing of biomass and coal increases thermal efficiency, it creates employment opportunities and provides a better way of utilization of agricultural waste. However, chlorine species from biomass combustion results in corrosion of boiler tubes at high temperature. In this review, challenges like fouling, agglomeration, gaseous emissions, emission of heavy metals, low heating value, storage and transportation problems and high temperature corrosion have been discussed, which can limit the flexibility, economy and reliability of biomass boilers. Each of these challenges has a relatively satisfactory solution except for hot corrosion, which has been addressed through several approaches with varying success and those approaches have been presented in this review. It is recommended that the implementation of the discussed remedies can surely provide efficient, economical and ecological biomass combustion.