Page 241 - Biofuels for a More Sustainable Future

216 Biofuels for a More Sustainable Future

The overall objective of the project VEDER was to make stakeholders
and policy makers aware of the effective energy and environmental ben-
efits arising from the use of biomass wastes for electricity and heat
generation.
In the above context, this paper presents a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
to evaluate the life cycle energy and environmental impacts of energy
produced by biogas obtained by biomass waste and fueled in a small size
tri-generation plant (producing electricity, thermal, and refrigeration
energy) with a useful life of 30years (8000h per year).
The analysis included the collection of waste due to agriculture and live-
stock in the agricultural district of Thibar, the use of waste in a bio-digestion
plant for biogas production, and the energy tri-generation from biogas
combustion.
The results of the analysis allowed at identifying the hot spots of the sup-
ply chain that goes from the biomass waste to the energy production to be
taken into account for more sustainable energy production processes.
This study deals with a subject often neglected in developing countries.
In fact, the attention to the environment in these countries has been slow if
compared to that in the industrialized countries, due to the lack of appro-
priate infrastructure, unsound policies, and ineffective environmental regu-
lations as well as financial and human resources constraints. Furthermore,
environmental issues in developing countries do not always represent a high
priority due to competing priorities such as poverty alleviation, rapid eco-
nomic development, and resolution of internal and external conflicts
(Massoud et al., 2010).
Each component of the tri-generation plant has a small size (cogenera-
tion plant: 50kW e ; absorption chiller: 25kW t ) and this allows for the cre-
ation of a small energy district that can be easily replicated in other
Tunisian and Mediterranean areas in the context of the distributed genera-
tion. Thus the presented study can be considered as a basis for other similar
contexts for transforming the threat of waste in an economic, social, and
environmental opportunity. Furthermore, it can contribute to the general
topic of sustainable production and consumption, giving some information
for a cleaner procurement and management of biomass waste for energy pro-
duction, in order to achieve a bio-economy based on energy from renew-
able sources. The experience is coherent with the principles of the circular
economy: it allows for reducing wastes disposed in landfill, for producing
energy from renewable energy sources (biomass wastes), and for recovering
useful heat from electricity production.