Geographical and economic assessment of feedstock availability for biomass gasification in Burkina Faso

Abstract

The crop production of Burkina Faso generates a large amount of residues that can be used for energy production. In the high crops production zone, people face low access to energy for household use and productive activities. Due to the widespread inefficient production and use of traditional energy sources, technologies as gasification have been implemented in rural areas for productive activities. One of the issues of implementing gasification in this country is the securing of biomass supply. This paper aims at assessing the availability of residues that could be used for gasification. Three levels of potential for plant and agro-industrial residues are estimated based on product-to-residue ratios and crop production. The results show that the theoretical agricultural residue pool is about 8 million tonnes. Sustainable recovery rates have been considered to protect soil fertility, human and animal consumption. Only cotton stalks and rice husks are recoverable at 75% and 20%. The mobilizable potential for bioenergy is 723,260 tonnes of cotton stalks and 6,497 tonnes of rice husks. These residues have an energy potential of 44,638 toe and 253 toe, respectively. The agricultural residues can therefore contribute sustainably to satisfy the bioenergy needs of the country's agro-industrial sector.

Keywords

• Agricultural residues
• Sustainable potential
• Bioenergy
• Burkina Faso