Renewable Energy

Biogas Plants

During the history of mankind, human’s relationship with the environment has always been following his behavior with his natural surroundings. Advances in technology and its non-compliance with the environment, changes in human civilizations in different eras, and ignoring the right relations between human needs and the environment has faced the lives of all beings on earth with more complicated issues.

Increasing global population and the high dependence of human kind on energy to do daily activities raises the demand for energy. On the other hand, rapid decrease of common energy sources across the world, pollution resulting of the consumption of fossil fuels, production of great volume of pollutants and wastes and lack of management and supervision of their disposal has become a new problem for people.

Nowadays, utilization of biogas technology in macro and micro scales, as a prospering approach in organic waste development and management plans in urban and rural areas is of great concern. Biogas, as a source of renewable energy, has significant social and economic interests and has an outstanding role in solving environmental problems resulting from pollutants and organic wastes in human societies. One of the problems dairy farmers are involved with, is to control livestock waste to decrease the annoying smell and other remnants causing environmental problems.

Biogas can help us to overcome the afore-mentioned problems and its environmental benefits include control of the annoying smell, improvement of air and water quality, improvement of nutritional value of the output manure, decrease of green gas emissions, and having biogas as a source of energy. Utilization of biogas has attracted a lot of attention in heat and power plants to produce energy, due to its economic, social and environmental benefits. Producing biogas by anaerobic digestion and its application in CHP plants in Iran can help the country to not only supply a part of required energy, but also enable the nation to step into a stable development stage.

Biogas installations can be used for different applications, as below:

– Waste sludge in waste water treatment plants

– Livestock and poultry wastes, including manure, feed and agricultural wastes

– Organic materials of civil wastes

– Wastes from slaughterhouses

– …

Biogas can be converted into following forms of energy, under special procedures:

Electricity: Biogas can be converted to electricity to be used in the network, by combusting process in CHP

Heat: In addition to generation of electricity in CHP, produced heat has also vast applications in industries and residential areas.

Methane: Methane can be converted to a high-quality natural gas to be inserted in the gas distribution network by applying special methods.

In addition to power and heat generation, biogas can be inserted into the local gas distribution network as natural gas, which is a futuristic and beneficial approach toward a source of energy, compatible with the natural environment. The other by-product of biogas is the valuable manure produced in the plant, to be sold out and used in the agricultural section.

Biomethane refinery requires a high technology in terms of installations. High level of automation, precise control systems for installations to control the production process and remote maintenance methods are vital in these plants. Moreover, compliance to environmental conditions of where the plant is going to be installed is of great importance.

Followings are some of the unique features of installations:

– Long life span

– Special designing and manufacturing, based on the contractor’s condition

– Appropriate process for all kinds of organic materials

– High performance installations with the lowest maintenance and repair costs

– High quality technology

– Production of electricity, heat and manure

Solar Energy

Development of industrial societies and increasing demand of energy, limits and heterogeneous distribution of fossil energy sources (oil, gas, coal), environmental worries of overuse of fossil fuels and diffusion of greenhouse gases as a consequence of burning fuels have made people think of replacements for energies, whose prominent characteristics are their purity, availability and renewability.

Solar energy is the one and among the most important types of renewable energies. The amount of sun shine varies throughout the globe and has the highest rate in earth’s solar belt. Iran is also situated in a region of high shines and studies prove the functionality of solar equipment in Iran, which can supply part of the required energy of the whole country.

Iran is considered among the countries with high potentials for solar energy, with 300 sunny days, and average shine of 4.5 to 5.5 Kw/m2. Some experts have stepped further and have claimed that Iran can also supply and export part of the energy to the region, if its desert area is equipped with solar energy panels. Studies by DLR show that it is possible to install more than 60,000 MW of solar plants in an area of around 2,000 Km2 in Iran. In case an area of 100 x 100 km2 is equipped with photovoltaic solar plants, the energy produced will be equal to the total rate of power production in 2010.

Considering the negative and irrevocable side effects of fossil fuels, promoting and developing renewable energies will be a necessity in the future. Although the technology of producing renewable energies is more expensive than that of other sources, lower environmental and social side effects cover extra expenses.

During the past two decades, scientists and researchers have done feasibility studies in civil, commercial and industrial sections and industrial countries like Japan and Germany have been looking for replacement types of energies, like solar energy for power generation, since it is available and natural. Japan started using photovoltaic energy for power generation in early 1990 and Germany followed afterwards. Recently China has also taken action to develop the capacity of solar energy and to decrease costs of power generation, as a consequence.

One of the varieties of solar energy is photovoltaic. Photovoltaics or solar cells are electrical equipment to directly convert sunlight to electricity. Photovoltaic effect exists when two different semi-conductive material (silicone and germanium) are adjacent to each other and produce an electrical flow in sunlight.

Nowadays, PV is a technology to produce renewable energies, is rapidly growing and is expected to play the main role in power generation (from different sources) in the world in the future. Solar PV systems are among the best to produce renewable energies, in a way that projects are attracting small businesses in order to fix the price for electrical power.

In spite of common coal, oil, gas and nuclear power plants, solar PV needs no fuels and includes almost low maintenance and operation costs. In this way, PV can avoid the increase in the price of fossil fuels.

Though the electrical power generated by PV is variable, it complies well with the peak of inquiry in summer time, when cooling systems are working, and also throughout the whole year for hot countries.

At the moment, PV is a comprehensive and stabilized technology, which is rapidly growing to access global markets, and the number of markets will grow by constantly decreasing the costs. It is a highly secure source of renewable energy, which is not affected by fluctuations of fuels’ price.