Defence of dissertation in the field of energy technology, Thomas Kohl, M.Sc. (Eng)
Improving Municipal CHP Production Efficiency by Integrating Biomass Upgrading.
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The public examination of the doctoral dissertation of Thomas Kohl, M.Sc. (Eng), will be held on 25 November 2016 at 12.00 at the Aalto University School of Engineering. The title of the dissertation is Improving Municipal CHP Production Efficiency by Integrating Biomass Upgrading.
Biomass constitutes an important energy resource in the Finish energy and industrial system and CHP plants are expected to play a key role in further increasing the share of renewables. Biomass resources can be used to supply materials, fuels and chemicals on a sustainable and environmental-friendly basis. As a restricted resource, biomass must be used as efficiently as possible. In this thesis three different pathways for biomass valorisation (production wood pellets, torrefied wood pellets and fast pyrolysis slurry) integrated with a municipal CHP plant are thoroughly investigated with respect to their energy efficiency, CO2 emissions and economic feasibility. Methods applied are process simulation, energetic and exergetic efficiency calculation and economic assessment.
The thesis also answers the question how the energetic and environmental performance of future polygeneration plants can be assessed in an objective and comparable manner. It was shown that, all processes investigated are well suitable to be integrated with the CHP plant and that all improve the energetic and environmental performance. Under the market assumptions made in this work, the biomass fast pyrolysis shows the highest economic potential. The thesis also concludes that primary energy analysis should be the preferred tool for process assessment owing to the fact that it allows fair process assessment by including the global impact of the applied technologies in a simple manner.
Opponents: Professor Henrik Thunmann, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden and D.Sc. Jussi Manninen, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland
Supervisor: Professor Mika Järvinen, Aalto University School of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering
Electronic dissertation thesis: https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/handle/123456789/49
Contact information: Thomas Kohl, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Thomas.kohl@aalto.fi