Clean Bioenergy Technology for Local Development.

MANRIQUE, SILVINA M.

Ölüdeniz

Congreso; 3rd International Congress on Energy Efficiency and Energy Related Materials; 2015

Gebze Technical University

The use of clean energy technologies (CET), that includes renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies, has grown greatly since past decades. Both technologies reduce the use of energy from conventional sources (fossil fuels) and the distinction or limits between both technologies are blurry. Some mains characteristics shared by the CET can be detected when they are compared with the conventional energy technologies: i) they produce minor environmental impacts; ii) they have higher initial costs (at the beginning of the project) and iii) despite its high initial costs, they are often cost competitive compared with the conventional technologies on costs of life cycle basis, especially for certain applications, since they tend to have lower operation and maintenance costs than conventional technologies. Nevertheless, it was assumed that another important condition of the CET is that it must be appropriate (to the environment, to the task and the people). This means that it have to generate the least possible impacts on the environment, using the local resources without exceeding the load capacity of the ecosystems in which they are inserted. With respect to the task, it must address the problem - productive or domestic?in an effective and efficient way and creating wealth. Finally, to be appropriated by the people, they must be low-cost, of easy managing and maintenance, easy to understand, and easy to repeat in a local scale. Therefore, knowing some technical aspects of Stirling Engine (SE), it was proposed to determine if this CET could be appropriate for the province of Salta. Described in a simple way, an SE is a device that converts caloric energy into mechanical energy for alternative compression and expansion of a given volume of working fluid (air, helium, hydrogen or even a liquid) at different temperatures. The change of volumes activates a piston connected to a crankshaft, which exercises the work of the engine. The SE, due to the non-explosive energy conversion to mechanical forms, generates low pollution level compared with external combustion engines, and it can be used from a wide variety of heat sources. Use from biomass as source of energy in isolated regions, provide a steady service, it does not need from other sources of auxiliary generation and eliminates the high costs associated with the consumption and transportation of fossil fuels. However, in Argentina there are very few construction and essays experiences with SE in its various configurations. No local studies the development and application of SE in beta configuration ? creator?s original design-and from biomass resources, were found. It was considered of fundamental importance the construction and experimentation of this type of engines in local level, to achieve local knowledge generation (to repeat the experiences). The objective of this work was to develop a simple methodological scheme that allows the visualization of the fundamental aspects of design and sizing, and build and experiment a biomass-based ES beta prototype (that is constituted in one of the pioneering experiences in the area). The contribution of this work is a locally appropriate technology.