• Energy Research
• engineering and technology close
• IT close
• CN close
• EC close
• English close

This work has been developed under the AGROinLOG Project, “Demonstration of innovative integrated biomass logistics centres for the Agro-industry sector in Europe”. An Integrated Biomass Logistics Center (IBLC), is based on the introduction of new production chains into existing agro-industries by using new biomass feedstock. The AGROinLOG Project has dedicated great attention to investigate the potential of cereal chaff as a valuable resource.Chaff is the fine fraction of the thrashing residues, not usually collected. Chaff is made up of glumes, seed husks, rachis and the tinner part of the cereal stems, whole and cracked kernels, as well as weed seeds.Currently there are several mechanical solutions available on the market for chaff recovery, and others are still at prototype stage, but theyare not so common and very often unknown to the farmers.So far, the literature reportsfew cases of chaff collection with the specific purpose of weed seeds removal, but it still lacks specificexperiments on these machinesintentionally used for biomass collection.For this reason, during the Project AGROinLOG a series of large field tests were performed using an independent scientific approach with different kind of chaff harvesting technologiesin France, Sweden and Italy from 2017 to 2019.The present study collects the results of these activities with the aim to fill that gap and provide deeper understanding in the possibility to enhance the current cereal harvesting method, in order to improve the quantity of biomass collected by including the chaff. Proceedings of the 29th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 26-29 April 2021, Online, pp. 62-68

The recent dispositions related to the energy performance of buildings, launched by the European Directives 2002/91/EC and 2010/31/EU, turned attention to the Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). The aim of this study is to investigate the economic effects of the recent Italian statutory provisions related to energy performance of buildings on listing behaviour. With this aim an hedonic regression analysis is performed, in order to measure the impact of EPC level on listing prices. The study, based on a set of more than 500 housing property asset collected in 2012 from real estate advertisements websites, is focused on the Turin real estate market as a case study. Furthermore this paper contributes to the early limited literature on implication of the impact of EPC level on Italian housing market, representing one of the first systematic evidence about the energy certifications in the housing listing prices. Aestimum, Aestimum 65 (2014)

The importance of emission control has increased sharply due to increased need of energy from combustion. However, biomass utilization in energy production is not free from problems because of physical and chemical characteristics which are substantially different from conventional energy sources. In this situation, the quantity and quality of emissions as well as used renewable source as wood or corn grain are often unknown. To assess this problem the paper addresses the objectives to quantify the amount of greenhouse gases during the combustion of corn as compared to the emissions in fossil combustion (natural gas, LPG and diesel boiler). The test was carried out in Friuli Venezia Giulia in 2006-2008 to determine the air pollution (CO, NO, NO2, NOx, SO2 and CO2) from fuel combustion in the family boilers with power between 20-30 kWt. The flue gas emission was measured with a professional semi-continuous multi-gas analyzer, (Vario plus industrial, MRU air Neckarsulm-Obereisesheim). Data showed a lower emission of fossil fuel compared to corn in family boilers in reference to pollutants in the flue gas (NOx, SO2 and CO). In particular way the biomass combustion make a higher concentration of carbon monoxide (for a incomplete combustion because there aren’t a good mixing between fuel and air) and nitrogen oxides (in relation at higher content of nitrogen in herbaceous biomass in comparison of another fuel). Proceedings of the 19th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 6-10 June 2011, Berlin, Germany, pp. 1296-1304

Recent extreme weather events have resulted in an ongoing discussion on the issues of land use and compensation payments within Austrian agriculture. Building on a functional evaluation system for agricultural lands as developed within the Interreg IIIB project “ILUP”, the national project “Agriculture and Flooding” has as its goal to classify the flood-protection contribution and flood sensitivity of agricultural lands. This, in turn, enables the recommendation of targeted measures for potentially improving flood situations, as well as an estimate of their implementation costs. In addition to the digital soil map, other fundamental sources used for the project are the digital flood risk map, IACS land-use data and works by the Institute for Land and Water Management Research. Reference values and marginal returns sourced from the Federal Institute of Agricultural Economics also flow into the cost estimates for the recommended combination. The results will contribute to an understanding of the multifunctionality of agricultural lands and to the setting of priorities on a regional scale regarding packaged flood-prevention and damage-minimization. However, the results at hand can only serve as one step toward regional flood protection projects, whose development will require the cooperation of all interest groups.

Emissions trading is a “cap and trade” regulation aimed at reducing the cost of meeting environmental targets. This paper studies how this regulation interacts with energy and competition policies. Two vertically related and imperfectly competitive markets are investigated: 1) the electricity market (output market); 2) the market for natural gas (input market). The effect of energy policy is simulated by assuming that the supporting scheme is able to improve the competitiveness of the low carbon technologies which are able, at the same time, to increase security of supply. The effect of the competition policy is accounted for by assuming that firms try to meet a profit target rather than to maximize profits, because of the regulatory pressure exerted by the competition and sector-specific authorities. By using the dominant firm model (in both markets) and the auction approach (in the output market), the paper highlights a trade-off between these policies. Without regulatory pressure, the result is ambiguous. Together, environmental and energy policies can lead to an increase in market power and its effects, but this in turn not necessarily amplifies their performances. However the worst case, the absolute increase in pollution in the short-run, is excluded. With regulatory pressure, the environmental and energy policies may imply a decrease in market power and this in turn can lessen their performance. In addition, this time the absolute increase in pollution in the short-run is not only possible but even likely. However this unfavourable effect would happen only if the pollution price is sufficiently low, that is if the environmental policy is rather modest. From the policy implications point of view, the analysis suggests what follows. If the models used to estimate performances and costs of environmental and energy policies ignore the full role of imperfect competition (the impact on prices combined with the strategic use of power capacity), this may induce incorrect estimations of the cost of the public action or may lead to incorrect policy calibrations, depending on how the policy targets are set. Finally, although the results are based on a series of simple assumptions about the operation and the structure of energy markets, they seem to be enough robust. Nevertheless the paper suggests caution in extending to other market structures the outcome of the dominant firm model.

The devolatilization of solid fuels is of crucial importance for all thermo­chemical processes and is the basic step in gasification and combustion models. Here a structural model is developed to provide an Advanced tool for Biomass and Coal Devolatilization (ABCD model), even in blend. The main features are founded on the original approach of the CPD (Chemical Percolation Devolatilization) model by Fletcher [1]. The ABCD model extends the approach also to biomass fuels. Further improvements of the ABCD model are: (i) a population balance between n­mers in liquid metaplast; (ii) elemental balance closure with the speciation of light gases, hetero­species and tar composition; (iii) introduction of secondary reactions of tar­cracking and crosslinking. The ABCD model results agree with a selection of experimental data (from homemade and literature works) on different biomasses. The results reported in this paper encouraged IFRF in continuing the experimental campaign for the validation of the model by extending the Solid Fuel DataBase SFDB. The inclusion of ABCD in comprehensive codes (e.g., Reactor Network Analysis, RNA [2]) and process models is valuable because it gives detailed distribution of pyrolysis products in a wide range of conditions with a low computational cost. Proceedings of the 18th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 3-7 May 2010, Lyon, France, pp. 923-930

Building materials have played a more and more important role in saving building energy since the central government of China set higher standards and requirements for new-constructed and retrofit buildings after 2005. Glazing units, especially energy-saving units including LOW-E coated glazing units and PVB laminated glass, are utilized nation-wide. This paper employs energy simulation to analyze the energy-saving effects of different glazing units in residential buildings in the city of Guangzhou, as an example of hot-humid climate in China. It appeals that the PVB laminated glass can refuse 44 % solar radiation to enter rooms and reduce 40 % of the shading coefficient comparing to clear glass. Meanwhile, in the aspects of operation and design of the HVAC system, 28 % of cooling load, 21 % of installed capacity and 8.6 % of full-load operation time can be saved.