Advanced Energy Harvesting from Macroalgae—Innovative Integration of Drying, Gasification and Combined Cycle

Abstract

State-of-the-art integrated macroalgae utilization processes, consisting of drying, gasification, and combined cycle, are proposed and their performance with respect to energy efficiency are evaluated. To achieve high exergy efficiency, the integration is performed through two main principles: exergy recovery and process integration. Initially, the energy involved in one process is recirculated intensively through exergy elevation and effective heat coupling. Furthermore, the unrecoverable energy from one process will be utilized in the other processes through process integration. As the result, the total exergy destruction from the whole integrated processes can be minimized significantly leading to significant improvement in energy efficiency. The first analysis relates to the performance of integrated drying process, especially the influence of target moisture content to energy consumption. Furthermore, the influences of gasification fluidization velocity to the total generated power and power generation efficiency are also calculated. As the results of study, the proposed integrated-processes proved a very high energy efficiency. A positive energy harvesting with the total power generation efficiency of about 40% could be achieved.

Keywords

• macroalgae
• energy harvesting
• drying
• gasification
• combined cycle
• exergy recovery
• process integration
• energy efficiency