New Way of Producing Useful Energy from Biomass in Countries Decommissioning Coal-Fired Power Plants

Abstract

This paper describes a new way of processing biomass using micro-CHPU devices (Micro Combined Heat and Power Unit). The micro-CHPU device is a new idea that allows to convert chemical energy in biomass into electricity for charging batteries in small electric vehicles and into useful heat for households. To make the device readily available and inexpensive, commercial Peltier modules were used, in which their operation was inversed to create the Seebeck effect. The presented research results show that the commercial Peltier module works very well as a thermoelectric generator. The proposed devices may turn out to be very useful in the times of the revolution that has begun on the energy market in most developing countries. Nowadays, many of these countries are intensively beginning to phase out energetics based on fossil fuels. A very popular and effective method of using biomass is mixing it with coal (in the proportion of 10% to 90%) and burning it in a coal-fired power plant or CHP plant. After closing these power plants, biomass will no longer be burned there. Then, the unused biomass could be burned in micro-CHPU devices. This will prevent biomass waste in agriculture.