7. Co-combustion of agricultural residues with coal
7.1. Introduction
Under certain conditions, co-combustion of agricultural
residues in existing coal-fired power plants may provide an
economical utilization of these residues. Several advantages
of co-firing biomass with coal have been mentioned (e.g.
[75–78]). For example, it could permit an existing plant to
utilize larger combustion equipment and therefore to capitalize
on the economy of scale. The normal economically
viable transport radius of biomass fuels to be used is around
50–80 km. Thus co-firing in power plants located within the
biomass production regions may be more cost effective than
transporting the biomass elsewhere for mono-combustion.
Co-firing is also useful where the production quantity or
nature (e.g. seasonality) can not support continuous operation
of a power plant. Finally, the high carbon content of
coal and the high volatile content of the biomass can
compensate each other during co-firing and provide a better
combustion process than for the individual fuels.