How can biomass energy development break the game?



"From a financial point of view, compared with wind power and photovoltaic, biomass energy is the object of neglect in the whole investment circle." Recently, at the fourth Global Biomass Energy Innovation and Development Summit Forum, Zhang Yongmiao, chief consultant of green finance of Huaxia Bank (5.770, 0.00, 0.00%), hoped to give new meaning to biomass energy from a financial perspective and improve the survival and development of biomass energy.

It is understood that since its birth, China's biomass industry has gone through a course of nearly 20 years. During this period, wind and light energy developed in the field of electricity. But the development of biomass energy, also a renewable energy source, has faltered, discouraging investors.

In recent years, the development of biomass energy has mostly relied on policy guidance. With the guidance and support of policies and related subsidies, the development of biomass energy, especially waste incineration power generation, is steadily advancing. However, professor Program of the Material Engineering Center of China Agricultural University said that compared with wind power and photovoltaic power generation, the development gap of biomass industry is very large. The reason is that in addition to the difficulty of biomass energy subsidies, the main reason is that the biomass itself has natural defects in the raw material characteristics.

Flawed, neglected, dependent on policy... These labels and characteristics that exist in biomass energy are also shackles that hinder its further scale development. The road to promoting the development of biomass energy needs to be opened.

Low energy density, difficult recovery, low conversion efficiency

Production costs continue to be high, difficult to make profits

Speaking of biomass energy, probably most people are more familiar with garbage power generation. In fact, there are far more kinds of biomass energy.

According to whether it can replace conventional fossil energy on a large scale, biomass energy is divided into traditional biomass energy and modern biomass energy. Traditional biomass energy mainly includes rural living energy, fuelwood, straw, straw, rice husk and other agricultural production waste and livestock and poultry manure; Modern biomass energy including waste incineration power generation, biogas, fuel ethanol, biodiesel, microalgae oil production, etc., can be applied on a large scale.

It is understood that can be used as biomass energy raw materials, mainly wood fibers. Among them, shrubs, grasses and crop straw and other substances account for a relatively high proportion, and at present, their energy conversion efficiency is low, which is also caused by the inherent defects of biomass energy.

The process pointed out: "Biomass energy energy low energy density, quality density is also very low, resulting in raw materials, difficult to receive, transport and high cost, limited energy conversion path (too few varieties), conversion efficiency is the root cause of almost all the current biomass industry costs continue to be high, difficult to profit and difficult to get rid of subsidies."

Taking biomass direct combustion power generation as an example, due to the difficulties in the collection and transportation of biomass raw materials, the large use of raw materials is not guaranteed, so small boilers have to be used. The corresponding temperature and pressure parameters of small boilers can not meet the requirements of efficient power generation, so the power generation efficiency is mostly less than 25%, and the single installation cost is high.

Therefore, it is not surprising that investment and financing institutions have less support for such enterprises, and the operation of enterprises is difficult, which further leads to the low utilization rate of biomass energy raw materials. Taking straw, an important new raw material of biological gas, as an example, it is also facing a bottleneck in the mass utilization.

At present, the utilization rate of modern biomass energy from straw is less than 5%. In the northeast, where a large number of straw are produced, the straw that is nowhere to be placed has become a problem for local development. It is understood that in order to fight the blue sky defense war, only the prohibition of straw burning this work, it has consumed a lot of manpower and time of the local ecological environment department.

The application of biomass energy and materials is narrow, and the value-added rate is low

The fundamental weakness of the biomass industry is difficult to change

With the "double carbon" goal proposed, China's carbon emission reduction requirements are increasingly tight. As a substitute for traditional fossil energy, biomass energy has attracted much attention because of its renewable, green, low-carbon and clean characteristics.

It is understood that although biomass raw materials will emit carbon dioxide when burned, there is no sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, etc., and the plant growth process absorbs carbon dioxide, so it can theoretically achieve zero emissions.

The White Paper on 3060 zero-carbon Biomass Energy Development Potential, prepared by China Agricultural University, predicts that China's biomass emission reduction potential will reach 900 million tons by 2030 and 2 billion tons by 2060.

However, limited by the natural defects of biomass, how to turn it into a stable substitute for fossil energy is still difficult.

Inspired by modern coal chemical industry, in recent years, China has begun to develop technology to promote the gasification of woody biomass.

"Lignocellulosic biomass is the largest category in the total biomass resources. But it cannot produce biogas and biogas through conventional fermentation." Cheng Xu told this reporter that the EU has made some breakthroughs in the technology of methanation of bio-based synthetic natural gas with wood fiber raw materials in recent years, but there are still low efficiency problems, resulting in high equipment and production costs, and the competitiveness of the bio-natural gas market is not strong.

It is understood that there are cases of biomass thermochemical technology to achieve biomass gasification at home and abroad, but it is not possible to form an economically and technically feasible bio-based syngas platform and its transformation series of industries. The process pointed out that the application of biomass energy and downstream materials after gasification is very narrow, and the value-added rate is low, which determines the fundamental weakness of the biomass industry is difficult to change.

Can the biomass industry "turn over"?

The breakthrough of biomass gasification technology is the key

In the view of the process, whether it can break through the above technical barriers to biomass gasification is the hope of the biomass industry to completely "turn over".

In order to make a breakthrough, the coal-based modification of biomass, making its energy density and material flow transport close to coal, is a key prerequisite.

"Coal is produced hundreds of millions of years in the underground high pressure and high temperature environment, the key to biomass coalification is whether the biomass raw material can be simulated into coal in a few minutes." Procedures said, "At present, the biomass coalification technology, which is mainly studied by China Agricultural University and Inner Mongolia Xinmu Group, has been successful. This technology uses an innovative thermochemical method, at 260 degrees Celsius and 2.6 mpa, with superheated steam pressure depolymerization and other processes, to achieve hydrogen enhancement, deoxidation, surface functional groups are all removed, increasing the density and calorific value of biomass, making biomass feedstock into a jet powder fuel, with the same pneumatic conveying property as coal."

Xinmu Group has also developed a mobile equipment, its biggest feature is that it can be pulled to a place where biomass raw materials are very rich for biomass coal production, which can effectively solve the problem of biomass raw materials collection and transportation. Moreover, the equipment has a small limitation on the characteristics of raw materials, even if the water content of raw materials reaches 30%, 40%, it can be used, and straw and shrub are particularly suitable as raw materials.

It is worth noting that replacing pulverized coal with coal-based biomass can also achieve integration with modern coal chemical industry, and ultimately can make oil and gas. For example, coal-based biomass can be further converted into biobased hydrogen-rich gas, contributing to the development of the "hydrogen economy" and the realization of the "two-carbon" goal.

Based on the advantages of biomass coal technology, Zhang Yongmiao told reporters that this technology is likely to subend people's understanding of the application of biomass energy, and on the basis of fully investigating the relevant parameters of the technology, so as to predict its market prospects, it can be considered as an important new renewable energy utilization technology, included in the cooperation project between Huaxia Bank and the World Bank to support.