Techno-economic assessment of integrated power plant with methanation

Greenhouse gaseous (GHG) emissions increment is driven by economic and population growth which are getting higher. This has led to the increase of atmospheric concentration of CO 2. Due to this situation, carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) seems to be promising approach to reduce emission of CO 2. Among all the carbon utilisation strategies available, methanation is promising. In the perspective of integrated power plant with methanation, the process is appropriate and relatively simpler due to availability of hydrogen as its main constituent. Prior to the goal of abatement of greenhouse gases emission, hydrogen production by using renewable energy technology which is electrolysis seems to be one of the solution towards future energy security. This study performed a techno economic assessment of integrated power plant with methanation with a case study in Iskandar Malaysia. From the economic assessment results, highest profit is generated when PEM is used in electrolysis process and CIS is used as solar panel due to its high efficiency and low capital expenditure (CAPEX). This cost competitiveness can be enhanced selling O 2 by product produced from electrolysis process and recycling the catalyst for methanation process. Further studies can be extended by including variation of parameter for a better optimisation superstructure

Ultimate and proximate analysis of Malaysia pineapple biomass from MD2 cultivar for biofuel application

MD2 pineapple is a highly demanded hybrid pineapple other than Josephine and Sarawak. The decomposition process of the pineapple biomass by burning may contribute towards carbon emission and increase the greenhouse effect. To address these negative impact, this biomass can be used as a raw material for the alternative solid biofuel to coal and substitute coal for the application in heavy industry or domestic use. The aim of this study is to investigate the characteristic of the MD2 pineapple biomass for their use as a feedstock for biofuel and energy production. The ultimate analysis was carried out by using CHNS Elemental Analyser, where the proximate analysis was identified by the thermo-gravimetric (TGA) analysis under dynamic condition. The results of the conducted study were compared with other biomass reported in the past literature. The ultimate analysis of the MD2 pineapple (i.e. 43.43 wt% C, 6.69 wt% H for leaf and 41.09 wt% C, 6.705 wt% H for stem) appears to correlate with the ultimate analysis range of the other biomass which is used as a raw material of the solid biofuel. The thermo-gravimetric analysis showed that each single part of the MD2 pineapple had pyrolysis and combustion characteristic based on its own main pseudo-components (hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin). The characteristics of the MD2 pineapple had ensured the potential of biomass as raw materials for alternative solid biofuel

Potential of energy recovery from an integrated palm oil mill with biogas power plant

The Malaysian palm oil industry has made significant contribution to the country's gross domestic product (GDP) due to the increasing global demand of palm oil over the past decades. However, it is undoubtedly a sector that consumes enormous energy and water. With the uprising concerns of the energy resource shortage and global warming, several green technology policies such as the feed-in-tariff policy have been implemented by government to accelerate the sustainable development of palm oil industry in Malaysia. The establishment of feed-in-tariff has successfully increased the number of palm oil mills that are completed with biogas facilities. Recent studies indicate that there are significant amounts of waste heat released from biogas power plant are utilisable as heat source for palm oil mill processes. As an initiative to develop the research of optimizing the energy efficiency of integrated palm oil mill with the biogas power plant, this study is directed toward the analysis of energy balance and material balance of an integrated palm oil mill with biogas power plant which covered both the palm oil milling process energy demand and the biogas power plant waste heat potential analysis. An integrated palm oil mill with biogas power plant running with 120 t/h fresh fruit bunches input was evaluated. The result indicates that there were a total of 3491.66 kW waste heat which corresponded to 46.82 % of the total biogas engine energy input could be recovered for process heating. By fully utilising the biogas plant waste heat as process heating for palm oil mill processes, it is estimated that up to 9.46 % of the total energy supplied could be saved

Organic rankine cycle and steam turbine for intermediate temperature waste heat recovery in total site integration

The utilization of waste heat for heat recovery technologies in process sites has been widely known in improving the site energy saving and energy efficiency. The Total Site Heat Integration (TSHI) methodologies have been established over time to assist the integration of heat recovery technologies in process sites with a centralized utility system, which is also known as Total Site (TS). One of the earliest application of TSHI concept in waste heat recovery was through steam turbine using the popular Willan’s line approximation. The TSHI methodologies later were extended to integrate with wide range of heat recovery technologies in many literatures, whereby Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) has been reported to be the one of the beneficial options for heat recovery. In general, the medium to high temperature waste heat is recovered via condensing/backpressure steam turbine, whereas ORC is targeted for recovering the low temperature waste heat. However, it is known that condensing turbine is also abled to generate power by condensing low grade steam to sub-ambient pressure, which is comparable with ORC integration. In this work, the integration of ORC and condensing turbine was considered for a multiple-process system to recover intermediate temperature waste heat through utility system. This study presented a numerical methodology to investigate the performance analysis of integration of ORC and condensing turbine in process sites for recovering waste heat from a centralized utility system. A modified retrofit case study was used to demonstrate the effectiveness application of the proposed methodology. The performances of ORC and condensing steam turbine were evaluated with the plant total utility costing as the objective function. The turbine integration was found to be more beneficial in the modified case study with lower utility cost involved. However, the capital cost has not been considered in the analysis

Review on the characteristic and feasibility of leachate for biogas production by anaerobic digestion

The sound handling of municipal solid waste (MSW) is of high priority to minimise environmental degradation and pollution. MSW can be treated via various technologies including landfilling, incineration, composting, anaerobic digestion (AD) and more. Landfill without landfill gas capturing serves as an enclosed bioreactor to store and stabilise waste. Other technologies such as incineration, composting and AD allow substantial volume reduction and generate value-added products. The treatment for MSW is commonly focusing on the solid part. Organic waste contains high moisture content of 70 - 90 %. The pressing of the water content before entering treatment unit, the release of water during and after the treatment, can generate high strength wastewater, known as leachate. Leachate is rich in organic matter, organic pollutants, pathogens, heavy metals and more, which can lead to severe secondary environmental pollution if not properly treated. Leachate from different treatment units showed certain unique characteristics, such as high Na, high Ca, different species and availability of heavy metals. This review summarised some of the important characteristics of different leachates and the suitability of AD as a mean of treatment. The efficiency of AD to treat leachate was presented in terms of the removal efficiency of chemical oxygen demand (COD) and biogas production. The COD removal efficiency was between 60 - 98 %, following the treatment of different leachates under different reactors and operational parameters. Among the different stream of leachates, the leachate from landfill is most commonly studied as a co-digestion substrate for AD, as compared to leachate from the composting facility

Waste management pinch analysis (WAMPA) with economic assessment

Conventional Pinch Analysis (PA) had been widely used d to define the target (demand chain) of a process system based on the information of stream quantities and quality (supply chain) for a micro-scale industries planning. With contrast to the conventional Pinch approaches, regional Solid Waste Management (SWM) strategy are often performed via optimisation tool which is often optimized in a "blackbox" optimization mathematical model. However, to enhance understanding and comprehension of the strategy, a visual technique like Pinch Analysis would be vital. A new application of Waste Management Pinch Analysis (WAMPA) for carbon emission was proposed to identify waste management strategies based on specified landfill reduction target and carbon emission target. This study used WAMPA methodology to analysis the effect of recycling target and cost reduction target towards waste management planning

Water-Energy Nexus Cascade Analysis (WENCA) for simultaneous water-energy system optimisation

This paper presents a new numerical method called the Water-Energy Nexus Cascade Analysis (WENCA), developed based on the principal of Pinch Analysis. Water and energy are both valuable resources that are majorly used in industrial processes. Both water and energy are interdependent where increasing water demand will increase the energy demand and vice versa. In this paper, WENCA is introduced to simultaneously optimise both water and energy system that is interdependent. The methodology applies Cascade Analysis to individually optimise both system. As both systems are interdependent, altering one of the system will result in a change to the other system. An iterative method is then introduced to converge the analysis to obtain the optimal result for both systems. A case study comprising of both electricity and water demand of 6,875 kWh and 3,000 m3 from a residential area with 1,000 unit of houses is applied in this work. The electricity demand is met using fuel cell where hydrogen is produced through coal gasification (which utilised water as it raw material), a water treatment plant (WTP) is also introduced for water treatment to fulfil the water demands. The optimal result reveals that the WTP capacity is 3,200.73 m3, its corresponding water storage tank capacity is 175 m3, hydrogen power plant is 9 MW and its corresponding energy storage capacity is 4.13 MW

Greenhouse gas emission of organic waste composting: a case study of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia green campus flagship project

Waste generation nowadays is rising in the world and it seems hard to prevent it. Solid Waste Management (SWM) has been a major problem worldwide in most of the fast growing towns and cities among the developing countries all around the world. Food waste and green waste constitute high volumes of municipal solid waste (MSW). The application of compost in the agricultural sector can contribute to sustainable soil health and other co-benefits. The compost produced from biological waste does not contain any chemicals unfavorable to living soil. The objective of this research was to calculate the greenhouse gas emission from the compost processed from the food and green wastes generated on-campus in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) as a pilot project. The result indicated that the composting process promotes the university as a green campus by converting organic wastes into valuable products such as organic fertilizer

A review on architectural and urban design approaches to reducing the urban heat island effect

With the ongoing rapid urbanisation, humans enjoy the comfort of living with the use of advanced technology and infrastructure, without consideration towards the pollution produced daily, such as waste, heat, and exhaust gas emissions. Human-induced climate change has resulted in extreme weather and climate events, causing a consequential increase in the urban heat island effect. A large amount of radiant heat is focused in the city area, threatening the threshold of comfort in urban living, affecting our future generations to come. Therefore, this paper discusses how this phenomenon could be mitigated through a few design approaches. The existence of green roofs helps reduce the direct absorption of heat in buildings while water bodies help lower the surrounding temperature of a place. Additionally, using high reflectivity and spectral emissivity materials in buildings can also lower heat absorption into a building. Also, the design of urban wind corridors increases airflow into an area, hence cooling the surrounding temperature. When these steps are strategically incorporated into a design, the amount of heat could be significantly reduced, hence extenuating the urban heat island effect. However, more in-depth research is needed to ensure that it could successfully palliate the urban heat island effect in a city. It is hoped that this study could be a comprehensive guide to designers and engineers, or any individuals in the field of architecture and urban design in tackling the problem, hence achieving their target in eliminating the urban heat island effect in future works