Biomass potential from agricultural waste for energetic utilization in Greece

Abstract

The alignment of the Greek national legislation with the corresponding EU legislation has enhanced the national efforts to pursue renewable Combined Heat and Power (CHP) projects. The scope of the present study has been the identification of the available biomass resources and the assessment of their potential. In this paper, we present the results from the administrative regions of Crete, Thessaly, and Peloponnese. The levels of lignocellulosic biomass in Greece are estimated to be 2,132,286 tonnes on an annual basis, values that are very close to the cases of other Mediterranean countries like Italy and Portugal. In respect to the total agricultural residues, Crete produces 1,959,124 tonnes/year and Thessaly produces 1,759,457 tonnes/year. The most significant streams are identified to be olive pits, olive pruning, and cotton ginning remnants, with more than 100,000 tonnes/year each. In the latter part of this manuscript, a case study is presented for the development of a CHP gasification facility in Messenia. The biomass energy potential of the area is very promising, with about 3,800,000 GJ/year. The proposed small-scale gasification technology is expected to utilize 7956 tonnes of biomass per year and to produce 6630 MWh of electricity and 8580 MWh of thermal energy.