Efficiency and environmental impact on use of agro-forestry wastes for energy production

The use of biomass wastes for energy conversion or combustion processes is a problem that has to assess environmental, economical and efficiency aspects. The work is first focused on combustion processes in a boiler (50 kWth) where online monitoring and control system provide feedback on the process efficiency. In parallel the environmental impact is investigated through analytical characterization of the raw material and on the residues from the combustion process (ashes and exhaust). Secondly, the work will regard the experimental setup of a lab-scale reactor in order to investigate the optimal combustion applied to the biomass and to develop solutions on process in order to exploit a possible biofuel production. A monitoring system based on Laser Photo Acoustic technique is proposed to monitor the process exhaust and identify a possible tracker compound for the system. The work will provide a solution to the use of agro-forestry residues.