Page 240 - Biofuels for a More Sustainable Future

A life cycle assessment of tri-generation from biomass waste 215

(GIZ—Deutsche Gesellschaft f€ur Internationale Zusammenarbeit, 2014;
GIZ—Deutsche Gesellschaft f€ur Internationale Zusammenarbeit, 2015).
In order to strengthen its national policy on sustainable energy from bio-
mass, Tunisia implemented different programs and projects (GIZ—
Deutsche Gesellschaft f€ur Internationale Zusammenarbeit, 2012; Reegle,
2012), showing the interest of this country in the exploitation of biomass
and waste for energy purposes:
– The four-year program for the 2008–11 period: it included investments
for the installation of electricity generation facilities with a capacity of
40MW using olive residues and with a capacity of 40MW using
household waste;
– Projects are in place to disseminate more efficient biomass stoves and to
exploit the rural/agro-business production of biomass;
– A pilot project involving gasification through poultry waste has been
launched;
– A 10MW waste-to-electricity project at the Jebel Chakir landfill has been
implemented;
– The 2010 Energy Efficiency and Biomass Project, in collaboration with
the World Bank, aimed to develop biomass energy sources as an alterna-
tive to fossil fuels in the country.
In Tunisia, there is a significant potential to expand biomass use by tapping the
largevolumesofunusedagriculturalandlivestockwastes.Domesticproduction
of organic waste was estimated at about 6 million tonnes/year in 2009: 2.2
million tonnes of household waste, 2.2 million tonnes from farms and agro-
industry,1milliontonnesfromoliveoilprocessing,400,000tonnesfrompoul-
try droppings, and 200,000tonnes from wastewater treatment (Reegle, 2012).
The waste biomass can be used, in particular, for the production of
biogas, playing a significant role in reducing environmental problems in
Tunisia, and leading to several environmental benefits, for example, reduc-
tion of waste disposal, saving of fossil fuels, increase of renewable resources
exploitation rate, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
Considering the potential of the waste biomass use for energy purposes,
Tunisia participated in the Cross-Border Cooperation Italy-Tunisia project
entitled “Valorisation e `nerge `tique Des Re `sidues—VEDER,” started in
February 2013 and finished in September 2016. Such a project was devel-
oped with the aim to create a pilot plant in the agricultural district of Thibar
(Tunisia) for the production of biogas from agricultural and livestock waste
and its successive use in a small size tri-generation system, using high effi-
ciency and low impact technologies.