Biomass, biogas and bioproducts

Pilot plants

The Centre of Scientific and Technological Research of Extremadura (CICYTEX) has a number of pilot plants and laboratories dealing with the use and transformation of non-food crops and farm waste into biofuel. The following is a description of the pilot plants available in our centre:

Solid biofuel pilot plants

Sinte 1000 pellet pilot plant with a production capacity of 100 kg/hour subject to the characteristics of the biomass being used. The pellet plant consists of the following elements:

 Hammer mill with various sieve screens for biomass grinding.

 Small hopper for ground biomass storage.

 Various matrices for biomass compression.

 A storage hopper for storing manufactured pellets.

Liquid biofuel pilot plants

Our Centre has two pilot plants for the production of liquid biofuels, one is for the production of biodiesel and the other one for bioethanol.

 The biodiesel pilot plant consists of a 250-litre transesterification reactor. This plant helps transform oil from oleaginous crops into top quality biofuel such as biodiesel.

 The bioethanol pilot plant has a 50-litre bioethanol production capacity using sugar-rich crops.

Biogas production pilot plant

It is built in stainless steel and has a workload of 1.5 m3 with similar characteristics to anaerobic digesters. The gas line of the pilot plant consists of a water trap, active carbon filter, gas meter (Ritter TG3/5 model, Germany) and, finally, the generated biogas is stored in a gasometer. The biogas component is measured using a gas analyser (Sewerin 540, Multitec). The pilot plant is connected to a boiler (with a 20 kW power burner) and an electric generator (10 kWe power). These pieces of equipment are used to produce heat or electricity, although in order to obtain the maximum power level it is necessary to provide a higher amount of biogas.