Italian Potential of Residual Biogenic Resources for Energy-driven Biorefineries

Abstract

A reliable assessment of the availability of bioresources represents the first step to defining local value chains of particular interest. More than 190 and 50 Mt/y of bioresources are currently available in Europe and Italy, respectively, even if they are not fully valorized. The best end use of these feedstocks is strictly dependent on specific territorial/regional peculiarities, that consequently affect the products' final properties. In this work, the Italian web-GIS-based tool “Atlante delle biomasse” was used to determine the availability of many bioresources in Italy at the regional level. A lump classification criterion was used to categorize the available biomasses, and, then, an optimization algorithm based on a process superstructure was applied to find out the available fraction of bioresources, the amount of biofuels potentially obtainable and, consequently, the regional fuel demand coverable by biofuels. In particular, only the energy-self-sufficient technologies with higher TRLs were considered in the mathematical model. The integration between the different selected bioresources led to three biofuels to be considered, evaluating the percentage of biofuel demand that could be covered for each Italian region. The final potential production of biofuels derived from local bioresources in Italy settles down on the range 9 107 – 1.6 108 GJ/y covering about 5, 50, and 100 % of methane, biodiesel and bio-LPG demand respectively. Bio-LPG demand for all regions was to be considered completely satisfied, biodiesel production was also sufficient to cover high demands, on the other hand, low values of biomethane requirements coverable were obtained.