Abstract
Bangladesh is an agriculture based country where more than 65 percent of the people live in rural areas and over 70% of total primary energy consumption is covered by biomass, mainly agricultural waste and wood. Only about 6% of the entire population has access to natural gas, primarily in urban areas. Electricity production in Bangladesh largely depends on fossil fuel whose reserve is now under threat and the government is now focusing on the alternating sources to harness electricity to meet the continuous increasing demand. To reduce the dependency on fossil fuels, biomass to electricity could play a vital role in this regard. This paper explores the biomass based power generation potential of Bangladesh through gasification technology—an efficient thermochemical process for distributed power generation. It has been estimated that the total power generation from the agricultural residue is about 1178 MWe. Among them, the generation potential from rice husk, and bagasses is 1010 MWe, and 50 MWe, respectively. On the other hand, wheat straw, jute stalks, maize residues, lentil straw, and coconut shell are also the promising biomass resources for power generation which counted around 118 MWe. The forest residue and municipal solid waste could also contribute to the total power generation 250 MWe and 100 MWe, respectively.
Highlights
The results suggest that even though agricultural residues such as rice husks may contain high energy potential, supplying a biomass gasification system in the long term may require tree farming in order to provide sufficient amount of resources [32]
Rice husk and straw can be ranked the top of the available biomass types in Bangladesh and have power generation potential of around 1010 MWe
Establishment of bagasse based power plants in sugar industries will lead to an enormous change in the sugar production and the rest of power will be supplied to national grid and to the local communities
Summary
In Bangladesh, agricultural residues vastly meet the household energy demands in rural and semiurban areas. This is practiced mainly because of the fact that around 65 percent of our economic activities are based on agriculture. About 6% of the entire population has access to natural gas, primarily in urban areas Biomass fuels, such as wood, cow dung, and agricultural. Most Bangladeshi households in rural areas (99%) as well as urban areas (66%) use biomass such as wood, cow dung, jute sticks, or other agricultural wastes for cooking and Table 1 presents the different sources of cooking fuels in Bangladesh. Solar home system alone produces 45 MWe, wind energy produces 2 MWe, and biomass share is not more than 1 MWe
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