Supergen Bioenergy Hub Case Studies
The vision of the Supergen Bioenergy Hub is to enable and stimulate the development of a sustainable UK bioenergy sector. This is supported through the Hub’s whole system research approach that encompasses all aspects of bioenergy expertise to identify pathways for delivering bioenergy with wider social, economic and environmental benefits.
We have adopted a case study analysis approach to focus our research on a series of specific real-life bioenergy systems that have been selected based on the availability of UK biomass, the UK’s energy demands and UK bioenergy technology expertise. The benefits of this approach will be to generate a greater in-depth and multi-faceted understanding of how the different Case Studies could be sustainably deployed within the UK. We will consider the potential deployment scales of the different Case Studies and their role and impact on the energy system and cross-cutting sectors.
The Supergen Bioenergy Hub Case Studies will provide the backbone of the Hub’s research, taking a systems perspective that will address the challenges existing between the interfaces of feedstock, technology, end use and wider energy system relevance.
The report below introduces the Supergen Bioenergy Hub Case Studies, explains how they have been developed and shows what approaches will be taken to address the research challenges they present.
Supergen Bioenergy Hub Case Studies Report
The Case Studies have been developed in collaboration with key stakeholders from government, industry, NGOs and academia.
Supergen Bioenergy Hub Case Studies
Supergen Bioenergy Hub Case Study 1: Hydrogen Fuel Cell
Energy crops and/or agricultural residues are used as feedstocks to produce hydrogen through a gasification conversion pathway. During the gasification and syngas upgrading processes, the CO2 (and other gas components) are separated and captured, leaving hydrogen to be used with a fuel cell to generate energy.
Supergen Bioenergy Hub Case Study 2: Biorefinery
Energy crops such as short rotation coppice (eg, willow) are processed through the application of ionic liquids as a pre-treatment followed by fermentation and catalysis processes to produce advanced liquid biofuels and value-added chemicals. Alternatively, forest residues could be used as feedstock.
Supergen Bioenergy Hub Case Study 3: Transport Fuels from Wastes 1
Municipal solid waste is processed for a gasification conversion process. The produced syngas is upgraded and used to produce (a) gaseous transport fuels or (b) converted to liquid bio-jet fuels through a Fischer-Tropsch process.
Supergen Bioenergy Hub Case Study 4: Transport Fuels from Wastes 2
Municipal solid waste is collected and processed and then through a fast pyrolysis process, pyrolysis oil is produced to be used to blend liquid transport fuels.
Supergen Bioenergy Hub Case Study 5: Heat from Food Wastes
Food wastes are collected and processed through catalytic conversion to produce hydrogen that can be used to generate heat.
Supergen Bioenergy Hub Case Study 6: Bioelectricity with Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)
Energy crops are grown specifically for the bioenergy sector to generate electricity with linked carbon capture and storage technologies for greenhouse gas removal.
