Emergy analysis in biomass combustion processes

Abstract

The scope of this work is to evaluate the sustainability of bagasse, sugarcane agricultural residues and Marabou within the combustion process in a retal type boiler of 45 t/h of steam from an emergy analysis. The emergy indexes of renewability ratio, environmental load and emergy sustainability were determined. From the determination of these indexes, in the case of bagasse combustion, the renewability ratio (%R = 58.04) and the emergy efficiency ratio (EYR = 2.3837) were estimated, indicating that the process moderately exploits local natural resources and the system is not sustainable on its own. However, the value obtained (ESI = 3.2971) gives a measure that the system moderately contributes to the economy by creating opportunities of local development. In the case of Bagasse-RAC combustion, the most significant result was the high value of the environmental load ratio (ELR> 2), indicating that the environmental impact of this alternative is unfavorable and not sustainable in the long term, quite the opposite to the combustion of Marabou as the low value of the environmental load ratio is very attractive (ELR = 0.5968), so the system is sustainable in the long term by itself.