Comparative Evaluation of Biomass Mixtures for Economic and Optimal Power Generation in India

The increasing demand of power, high cost associated with non-renewable energy sources like coal and petroleum and degradation of environment compel us to search and develop such energy system that will use renewable sources of energy. Biomass is one of them, which is clean and environmentally safe source of renewable energy. It has been estimated that approximately 38% of energy of the world would come from biomass by 2050. In India the availability of different types of biomass is approximately 120-150 million MT per annum which corresponds to potential of 16000 MW. In present scenario, the amount of energy produced by single renewable source is not sufficient. It has been reported in literature that a suitable mixture of different biomass can yield better properties in terms of their calorific values, moisture content, ash content etc. Further the emission analysis of C, H, O, N and S are also included here. This paper makes comparative analysis of different kind of agriculture biomass based on these properties and attempts to determine optimal and economic biomass mixture.