Biomassa voor de energievoorziening van tuinbouwclusters

Biomass combustion in combination with a cluster of greenhouses to provide heat, CO2 and electricity can provide a partly solution to the sustainability of the horticultural sector. A biomass gasification plant could also provide valuable biochar, the result of partial combustion of biocarbon. This was shown to have attractive characteristics to be used in high quality potting soil. Despite the high value of the biochar (contributing for 16% of the income from the plant), the economic feasibility of a biomass combustion plant depends heavily on governmental subsidies (SDE +). When the developed technology is used on a practical scale, a biomass plant of 8 MW thermal power and 1.4 MW of electrical power is a sound size. Such a plant fits well with a horticultural cluster of 15 hectares, consisting of 6 ha Tomato, 6 ha Pepper and 3 hectares of Chrysanthemum. The biomass plant produces over 91% of the heating and 95% of the CO2 requirement and 67% of the electricity counsumed. However during winter a lot of electricity will have to be bought, which is compensated with selling to the public grid in summer. The biomass combustion plant will mainly run on biomass is supplied from elsewhere. The biomass from the local cluster covers only 0.3% of the combusted amount. If all available biomass from Netherlands territory would be used to heat greenhouses about 20% of greenhouse industry could make use of system like described in this report.