Good practice:

Production of electrical energy, cold and heat through the use of forest and agricultural wastes

The main objective of TRIBAR Project "Biomass-solar microgenerator of residual use" is to obtain electricity, industrial cold and heat through a compact, modular, scalable and portable system that hybridizes solar energy and takes advantage of agricultural or forestry wastes and thus allows reduce the power energy contracted by farmers.

The heat provided by this prototype can be the only energy source in the system or combined with generated by a biomass boiler, which in turn may also be the only energy source in the plant. Part of this heat can be used in generating electricity. Another part can be dedicated to the generation of industrial cold, through an absorption machine and the rest of the heat can be used for heating or industrial processes.

This prototype is located in the facilities of the solid biofuel factory from forest and agricultural wastes. This plant is designed to meet the specific needs of the company and is made up of a boiler, Fresnel solar field, turbine, absorption chiller, heat dissipation system and a control system.

The main consumers of this system will be agro-food industries located in remote places with difficult access to electricity (which makes their products more expensive). The waste from these industries will be the raw materials that will be used for energy generation.

TRIBAR is a project financed by the Centre for Industrial Technological Development, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and supported by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness.

Total execution budget: 1.961.074,00 €

In this plant, the micro-trigeneration process produces around 400 kW of thermal energy, 50 kW of electricity and 35 kW of cold thanks to a hybridization process between biomass and solar energy.

In the agri-food activity, the harvest is seasonal and for this reason the energy consumption as well. This forces companies to hire a very high power, unnecessary during the rest of the year, with the consequent economic expense.

This project can be implemented anywhere in the world with access to agricultural biomass wastes, being especially interesting in situations of intensive seasonal energy demand and in isolated locations where transport networks are deficient and the transport of fuels such as gas or diesel is a big logistical problem, since this is where distributed generation reaches its maximum efficiency.