Modelling of Power Generation from Biomass Resources

Electricity demand rises rapidly every year as a result of industrialization and population growth. Fossil fuel – crude oil, natural gas and coal, and hydro are the main sources to generate electricity in Malaysia. However, Malaysia’s government in 8th Malaysia Plan 2001 has encouraged the development of renewable energy as the fifth fuel in electricity generation. Biomass is seen as one of the potential source of electricity generation considering that Malaysia has abundant biomass availability throughout the year. However, until now the utilization of biomass waste to generate electricity is still very low and not competitive yet with fossil fuel production. These problems lead to the study of modelling of power generation from biomass resources. The objective of this study is to determine the optimal feasible route of power generation from biomass resources. Potential biomass resources and possible technologies to convert biomass into electricity will be discussed and integrated into the superstructure model. Then, the linear programming (LP) model for the superstructure is developed and implemented in MATLAB to obtain the maximum power generation. The result obtained from the MATLAB shows that the maximum feasible route of power generation is the route that used pyrolysis process producing upgraded bio-oil with help of gas turbine to generate electricity. The result also shows that electricity generated from biomass is able to achieve targeted amount of energy demand in Malaysia by the year 2015. Therefore, it is concluded that biomass has the great potential to be source of electricity replacing fossil fuel in the future.