Latest advances on hybrid solar–biomass power plants

Abstract

ABSTRACT With an increasing global population, energy demand is rising as well. The limitation of fossil fuels, climate change, and environmental concerns due to the usage of these fuels, have led to considerable attention to renewable energies in the last few decades. Solar energy and biomass are two of the best available sources of renewable energy in most parts of the world. However, each of them suffers from some drawbacks. Solar radiation is only available for a limited time during a day, and its availability can be intermittent or reduced depending on the weather and season. On the other hand, extracting energy from biomass demands a huge feedstock, which may not be readily available in all locations and seasons. Transporting biomass would not only increase costs but would also increase carbon monoxide emissions from fossil fuel consumption by transport systems. A combination of both sources is a promising method to lower greenhouse gas emissions and reliable energy investment. The hybridization of these energy resources and applications in a power plant has attracted the attention of researchers in recent years. This study presents an in-depth review of the latest advances in integrating solar and biomass energy in power plants and summarizes and discusses the past effort and the current status of hybrid power plants, their performance, different feasible combinations, and challenges. This review can be a useful reference to investigate the performance of a hybrid solar-biomass power plant in terms of energy, environmental, economical aspects, and conduct readers to future work and novel ideas in this field. A thorough review of the literature reveals that despite that several studies have been conducted in this field, there is currently only one operational hybrid solar-biomass power plant; Termosolar Borges, with a capacity of 22.5 MWe, which is located in Les Borges, Spain. However, some small-scale prototypes are constructed and aimed to extend to a large scale. In terms of possible hybridization scenarios and performance, among solar energy technology, concentrated solar power is a more suitable and proven technology than PV for the hybridization with biomass fuels. Among technologies applied to utilize power from biomass fuels, combustion has proven to be a more economically viable input heat for typical power plants than gasification. In contrast, gasification offered a better option for a larger scale, as the overall cost decreased significantly with scale.