• Energy Research
• 7. Clean energy close
• 11. Sustainability close
• 4. Education close
• English close
• Digital.CSIC close

Simulation processes have been carried out to assess the mass and energy balances of the pyrolysis process in an auger reactor pilot plant. Forest woodchips were fed into the reactor with 6.2% of moisture content. Previous experiments showed that the highest bio-oil yield (59%) was achieved at 773 K and applying solid residence times longer than 2 minutes. These conditions were modelled using Aspen HYSYS simulation software and results showed that the process was not thermally autonomous. In order to scaling up the pilot plant and convert it into a mobile plant, a novel design was conceived to process 1500 kg/h of biomass (30% moisture content). It incorporates a drying unit and a char combustor. Simulation results showed that 12% of the char should be burnt to maintain positive the energy balance. The process is energy-independent when moisture content is lower than 20%. Further sensitivity analyses were performed studying different moisture contents, the efficiency of the drying stage and using air as carrier gas instead of nitrogen. This novel design will produce bio-oil as an energy vector with reduced transport costs since it will be able to process biomass from remote locations, which will contribute to sustainable forest management. Proceedings of the 18th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 3-7 May 2010, Lyon, France, pp. 1047-1051

The International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, Vol. 18 No. 3 (2011): Special Issue: Agriculture and Climate Change This article does not have an abstract.

This work was funded by the Spanish Ministry MINECO and the European Regional Development Fund under the projects PRI-PIBAR-2011-1 and ENE2013-48816-C5-5-R, and the Government of Aragon (DGA) and the European Social Fund (DGA-ESF-T66 Grupo Consolidado). Work presented at the meeting IBERNAM-CMC2. November 20-21, 2014, Naturgas Energía, Bilbao, Spain Peer reviewed

The main goal of AGROinLOG is the demonstration of Integrated Biomass Logistic Centres (IBLC) for food and non-food products, evaluating their technical, environmental and economic feasibility. The project is based on agro-industries, which are willing to deploy new business lines in their facilities, opening new markets in bio-commodities (energy, transport and manufacturing purposes) and intermediate bio-products (transport and biochemicals). More specifically, this work is focused on a fodder industry, whose main activity is related to the dehydration of wheat straw and corn stalk to produce animal bedding and feeding. The object of this study is the evaluation of two biomass-based materials (i.e. wheat straw and corn stalk) to determine the potential of these feedstock as raw materials for the synthesis of activated carbons (ACs) and their further application as supercapacitors. This publication is part of a project that has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and programme under grant agreement No The work was performed in the framework of the European project AGROinLOG (Grant Agreement No 727961) “Demonstration of innovative integrated biomass logistics centres for the Agro-industry sector in Europe”. in collaboration with Instituto de Carboquímica (Spanish National Research Council). www.agroinlog-h2020.eu. 4 figures, 3 tables.-- Work presented at the 28th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition (e-EUBCE 2020). Virtual, 6-9th July 2020. Session: 3CV.1.27 Peer reviewed

Hydrogen is currently mainly obtained by steam reforming (SR) of natural gas, consuming a high amount of energy to produce H2 with low purity and yield. To overcome these issues, Sorption Enhanced Steam Reforming (SESR) is emerging as a novel process that combines SR with in situ CO2 capture to produce high-purity and high-yield H2. In this work, biogas is proposed as a renewable feedstock in SESR, and the process has been simulated in Aspen Plus to perform an energy analysis. Air is used as the regeneration agent and biogas as a fuel in the sorbent regeneration unit (REG) for sorbent recovery, allowing cyclic operation. The flue gas heat recovery system is modeled using CO2 as the energy source for steam production and H2 as the energy source for air preheating. High H2 yield (96.07%) and purity (95.40 vol.%) were obtained from biogas SESR regardless of biogas composition. The Potential Net Efficiency of biogas SESR, including sorbent regeneration, was in the range of 69.98%-76.77% depending on biogas composition. Proceedings of the 29th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 26-29 April 2021, Online, pp. 1366-1370

[ES] El calentamiento asistido por micro-ondas se considera una tecnología más rápida, eficiente y selectiva en comparación con otras técnicas de calentamiento convencionales para el tratamiento hidrotermal de biomasa. Específicamente, esta tecnología permitetanto lograr un mejor control del proceso, como el uso de menores temperaturas. Además, como el agua utilizada como disolvente en estos procesos es muy eficiente absorbiendo la energía emitida por las micro-ondas, la combinación de condiciones hidrotermales junto con un calentamiento asistido por micro-ondas, resulta en una alternativa novedosa y muy interesante para el diseño y desarrollo de nuevos procesos hidrotermales. En este contexto, el presente artículo resume algunos de los avances más recientes desarrollados en el Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence, del Departamento de Química de la Universidad de York (Reino Unido), (https://www.york.ac.uk/chemistry/research/green/research/publications/) sobre el uso de la tecnología de calentamiento por micro-ondas para la valorización hidrotermal de biomasa, incluyendo procesos de licuefacción, descomposición y fraccionamiento. Estas reacciones son de gran interés en la industria química y representan una contribución sustancial en el desarrollo de nuevos procesos para el pre-tratamiento de la biomasa, contribuyendo sustancialmente al desarrollo de nuevas rutas para la valorización sostenible de biomasa y residuos. [EN] Microwave heating represents a potentially faster and more efficient and selective technology for the hydrothermal treatment of biomass in comparison to conventional heating based technologies. Specifically, microwave heating allows not only achieving a better process control, but also lower temperatures to be used. Furthermore, as water is highly effective in microwave energy absorption, the combination of hydrothermal conditions together with microwave assisted heating offers an interesting new technology for the design and development of novel hydrothermal processes. Herein, this work summarises some recent advances achieved at the Green Chemistry Centre of Excellence, Chemistry Department, University of York (UK) (https://www.york.ac.uk/chemistry/research/green/research/publications/), regarding the use of microwave technology for the valorisation of biomass under hydrothermal conditions, including microwave-assisted hydrothermal liquefaction (MA-HTL), decomposition (MA-HTD) and fractionation (MA-F). These processes are very timely and the work conducted represents a step-change in biomass pre-processing technologies, helping the development of novel routes for biomass valorisation. This research was funded by the Industrial Biotechnology Catalyst (Innovate UK, BBSRC, EPSRC and EP/N013522/1) and EPSRC grant number EP/K014773/1. Javier Remón Núñez would like to express his gratitude to the Spanish Ministry “Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades” for the Juan de la Cierva fellowship (FJCI 2016-30847) awarded. 3 Figuras.- 1 Tabla Peer reviewed

Datasets as supporting information to article High Bat Fatality Rates at Wind Farms in Southern Spain to be submitted to PLOS ONE. The Readme files describe variables in the corresponding datasets. Address questions to Sonia Sánchez-Navarro, sonia.sanchez@ebd.csic.es The dataset supports the article High Bat Fatality Rates at Wind Farms in Southern Spain to be published in PLoS ONE

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) can help nations meet their Paris CO2 reduction commitments cost-effectively. However, lack of confidence in geologic CO2 storage security remains a barrier to CCS implementation. Here we present a numerical program that calculThe ‘Storage Security Calculator’ (SSC) allows calculating CO2 storage security and leakage over 10,000 years based on realistic, regional-scale storage parameters. The program includes two opposed submodels acting on the amount of CO2 injected, one calculating CO2 immobilisation and retention (by means of residual, solubility and mineral trapping) and the other CO2 leakage (via active wells, abandoned wells and natural features). The SSC provides two types of output, one as a “base case” scenario, where single values are used for each input parameter, and a second as a Monte-Carlo analysis, to incorporate uncertainty on the input parameters. The SSC is fed with data from a comprehensive literature review, available at the Supplementary Materials in Alcalde et al. (2018). The full description of the software, input parameters and three examples based on realistic scenarios for CO2 storage regions can be found in Alcalde et al. (2018). NERC Grant NE/M007251/1; EPSRC Grant EP/K036033/1; Scottish Funding Council, EP/K000446/2, NERC Grant NE/L008475/1; EPSRC Grant EP/P026214/1; NERC GHGR programme Grant NE/P019749/1; EU H2020 Grant 636811 Contacto: Alcalde, J., jalcalde@geo3bcn.csic.es Contacto: Flude, S., sflude@gmail.com Más información: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04423-1 Peer reviewed