Abstract
The industrial sector, the world’s largest energy consuming end-user, is a major greenhouse gas emitter. It heavily relies on fossil fuels, with only a small contribution from renewables, and of these, only biomass (mainly primary solid biofuels) is not marginal at a global scale. Several factors contribute to the limited adoption of renewables within the industry. The sector’s extraordinary diversity and complexity make a one-size-fits-all solution impossible. Industrial energy consumption varies significantly among different sub-sectors and even within each sub-sector, depending on production composition and industrial processes. Energy-intensive industries typically consume substantial amounts of process heat, while non-energy-intensive ones tend to rely more on electricity. Given the importance of energy-intensive industrial sub-sectors, finding solutions to decarbonise process heat is crucial. Process heat encompasses various applications, technologies, energy sources, temperatures and delivery methods. There is substantial demand for high-temperature process heat (>500 °C), with only a limited number of renewable energy options available, including bioenergy. Bioenergy holds the potential to contribute to the decarbonisation of industry but requires tailored solutions for each sub-sector and context. This chapter presents key commercially available biomass heat production systems, which vary in configuration, technologies and scale, with similarities to district heating systems, also discussed.
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Notes
- 1.
Note that these figures exclude the non-energy use of fossil fuels (for example, the fuels used as feedstocks to make products such as plastics and chemicals or bitumen used as road surface).
- 2.
OECD stands for Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.
- 3.
In 2020, these three sectors accounted for almost 60% of the world industrial energy consumption and more than 70% of the industrial CO2 emissions [33]. The emissions from industrial processes are included in this value, which for some industrial processes (e.g., cement and lime production) are important [34].
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Acknowledgements
The work was supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, through IDMEC, under LAETA [project UIDB/50022/2020]. Isabel Malico expresses her gratitude to Lucas Saffian for the valuable help drawing the sketches included in this chapter.
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Malico, I. (2024). Biomass for Industrial and District Heating. In: Gonçalves, A.C., Malico, I. (eds) Forest Bioenergy. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-48224-3_9
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