Thermoeconomic analysis of three biomass upgrading processes integrated with a municipal CHP plant

This work assess the exergoeconomic performance of three biomass upgrading processes, namely wood pellets, torrefied wood pellets and pyrolysis slurry (a mixture of pyrolysis char and oil), integrated with a municipal combined heat and power plant. Economic data of the assessed processes has been obtained from the literature and has been combined with the exergy data following the specific exergy costing approach in order to perform the exergoeconomic analysis. The systems’ exergetic efficiency can be improved by 22%, 26% and 31% for the integration with pyrolysis slurry, torrefied wood pellets and wood pellets, respectively, making wood pellets the most efficient integration option. However, the integration of pyrolysis slurry production yields the highest profit under the projected price scenario.