BIOMITRE Technical Manual

Nov 2004

The BIOMITRE software tool has been developed through an accompanying measure, referred to as "BIOmass-based Climate Change MITigation through Renewable Energy" or the BIOMITRE Project. The project was designed to allow production of a software tool which provides a standard means of analysing the GHG balance and emissions-saving cost-effectiveness of biomass energy technologies. The work has been undertaken with funding from the Directorate-General for Energy and Transport of the European Commission (EC) and co-funding support from the International Energy Agency (IEA) Task 38.
The main aim of the BIOMITRE Project has been to assist the widespread propagation of biomass energy technologies throughout the EU as a cost-effective means of providing commercial renewable energy supplies which mitigate global climate change through GHG emissions savings. In this context, the BIOMITRE Tool is designed to enable a wide range of users to conduct assessments with relative ease and to foster confidence in the results amongst a broad audience.
The Tool is designed to be generally-applicable to all major commercial biomass energy technologies, including agricultural and forestry residues, energy crops and wastes. Additionally, it encompasses all the important elements of these technologies, including production (cultivation, harvesting, recovery. etc.), processing (chipping, pelletisation, baling, etc.), transportation (by road, rail, waterways, etc.), conversion (direct combustion, co-firing, gasification, pyrolysis, digestion, etc.) and end-product utilisation (heat, power, combined heat and power, liquid biofuels, etc.).
The tool consists of modules which reflect these elements and accommodate their diversity.
The Tool has been developed in compliance with a standard methodology based on existing work, studies and models developed by IEA Tasks 25 and 38, and by other researchers in this field. Existing work has been reviewed, specified and recorded in a systematic manner as part of the BIOMITRE project, as a basis for producing the unified standard methodology outlined in Section 4.

By: R. E. Horne, R. Matthews

 
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