Applicability evaluation of biomass pyrolytic poly-generation technology on clean heating in northern rural of China

Abstract: Using the clean energy heating in northern rural area is an important content of the energy production and consumption revolution and rural life style revolution. It concerns whether people in the northern rural area could get warmer in winter or fog day could be reduced in the heating season. Differ from the urban, heating in the northern rural area is dispersive. Poor heating infrastructure, low energy utilization rate and serious pollution emissions are all outstanding issues in heating of northern rural area. At the same time, the heating demand in the northern rural area is large, and the heating using the clean energy substituting scattered coal is primary task. It is a crying need for energy-saving promotion in northern rural area. By analyzing heating current situation in northern rural area in China, this article presented the realistic problem and the need of clean energy heating. The advantages of continual biomass carbonization technology are high production efficiency, stable product performance, convenient process control and etc. Based on poly-generation mode with biochar, gas and oil by continual pyrolysis, biomass pyrolysis could derive more poly-generation modes. This article pointed out clean energy heating technical path and application mode based on biomass pyrolysis poly-generation technique, which were suitable for the northern rural area in China. And two poly-generation heating modes, 'poly-generation circulation heating mode with biochar, gas and liquid', and 'poly-generation circulation heating mode with biochar and steam' were proposed in this article. Then the technical and economic feasibility and environmental influence for each mode were analyzed. The results showed that biomass pyrolysis poly-generation was suitable for heating in the northern rural area under the current economic and technical conditions. This is especially suited for small scale central or decentralized heating in natural village and new-type rural community. For example, in village or rural community including 200 households, pyrolysis gas consumption per household was 15~18 m3/d (cooking gas consumption was 1 m3/d, heat value of pyrolysis gas was more than 15 MJ/m3) in heating season. The project initial investment was usually less than 3 million RMB, and the payback period was 4 to 5 years. This article summarized the present situation of heating in northern rural area in China, and presented the realistic problem and the basic need for clean energy heating. It proposed clean energy heating technical path and application mode suited for northern rural area in China, which is based on biomass pyrolysis poly-generation technique. Also this article analyzes technical and economic feasibility and environmental influence for each mode, and provides a new idea and method for solving the clean energy heating in the northern rural area.