Techno-economic Assessment of Charcoal Production for Carbon Sequestration

Abstract

Greenhouse gas (GHG) emission is one of the important environmental issues that world is facing today. Biomass usage, specifically capturing energy from biomass that would otherwise decay, is one the of many options available to mitigate the impact of the buildup of GHG emissions from fossil fuel utilization. This research investigates the pathway of utilization of agricultural biomass (e.g. straw) for charcoal production and its landfilling for sequestration of carbon. This pathway can help in increasing the rate of carbon sequestration. Charcoal is a solid fuel, which can be produced from agricultural biomass such as wheat and barley straw. It is an organic solid and can be produced by slow pyrolysis of straw. This research involves a conceptual techno-economic study to estimate the cost of production of charcoal from straw in a centralized plant and its storage in a landfill to sequester carbon. This study draws on actual data to determine the cost of charcoal production. The cost of production of charcoal from straw in a centralized system with nutrient replacement cost and its landfilling cost is $332.2/tonne of charcoal. The life cycle GHG emission for this pathway is 0.372 tonne of CO2/tonne of charcoal produced. Based on the cost of production and landfilling of charcoal and the GHG emissions in this pathway, the cost of carbon sequestration is about $129.88/tonne of CO2. This is higher than the biomass based electricity generation pathway but lower than some estimates of carbon capture and storage technologies for carbon sequestration.