Biogas-fueled micro CHP units –A promising pathway for greenhouse gas mitigation

It is foreseen that small-scale distributed heat and power generation technologies fed by biogas will play an important role in the future global energy market to meet increasing demand for energy and goals for greenhouse gas emission reduction. In order to investigate the possibility of biogas use in small-scale energy conversion technologies developed for natural gas, a nationally funded project was initiated in Stavanger, Norway in 2010. The main objective of this project was to use as much as possible biogas mixed with natural gas without any hardware modifications to the energy conversion units. Three experimental setups with a micro gas turbine, a gas engine and a short stack of solid oxide fuel cell were installed for experimental studies, providing necessary data for model development and validation for engine performance monitoring. This paper presents results corresponding to the micro gas turbine system. The results concerning mapping the operational window for use of mixture of simulated biogas and natural gas for this technology is presented here. The CO2 reduction potential, when natural gas is partly replaced with biogas, is also presented. Finally, different relevant methodologies are presented to realize the potential of clean development mechanism for biogas utilization in Iran. The results show that for all operational conditions, the electrical efficiency slightly decreases by fuel change from natural gas to the biogas. The results also confirms biogas use in the system up to 26% (vol.) without any hardware modifications. This means 19% CO2 emission reduction compared to completely natural gas-fired system.

کلیدواژه ها:

Biogas ، CO2 emissions ، Micro gas turbine ، Performance analysis ، Clean development mechanism