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Indicators for sustainability assessment 105

Table 4.11 Economic parameters used in the analysis
Parameter Adopted value
Income tax 35%
Other taxes 18
Discount rate a 7%
Lifetime 25 years
Construction time 2 years
Depreciation (linear) 10 years
Funding payment period 10 ears
Bagasse price b 6.67 US$/t c
b
Straw price US$ 19/t c
Contingencies and working capital c 5% of the initial investment
a
BNDES (2017).
b
EPE (2016).
c
Larson et al. (2009).
For the construction of processing plants the value of α corresponds to
0.6 (Dias et al., 2014). The economic parameters used in the analysis are pre-
sented in Table 4.11.

21 Cost of gasification and Fischer-Tropsch synthesis
plants

There are only a few biomass gasification plants operating on a commercial
scale, and some pilot plant projects were discontinued. In fact, there are sev-
eral technical challenges to be overcome, before any technology can start to
operate on biomass. China has been progressively investing in coal gasifica-
tion plants, importing technology from other countries. Important examples
of biomass gasification pilot plants include the Choren project, in Germany,
which was designed to gasify 65,000tonnes of wood per year, the Chermec
Project, in Sweden, which produces second-generation bio-kerosene and
biogas, and also a biofuel production project in France that converts ligno-
cellulosic raw materials into biodiesel and bio-kerosene (Ett et al., 2014).
These high investments represent an obstacle to wider implementation of
biomass-fuelled technologies. As there are only a few gasification plants
operating at commercial scale, uncertainty can drive up current investment
costs to levels that are far from acceptable limits.
Table 4.12 presents the costs of equipment used in gasification and FT
synthesis. In the case considered herein, the enterprise revenues are obtained