Environmental and economic assessment of the co-firing of the coal-bagasse mixture in the Colombian sugarcane mills

Energy generation is key to any country's development, and the threats to energy supply have led the Colombian government to establish national policies that stimulate energy generation projects. In response, this manuscript reports the economic impact and the GHG emission that have been simulated in this study to evaluate the co-firing of the coal-bagasse mixture in the cogeneration systems of the ethanol industry in the Cauca River Valley in Colombia as an opportunity to increase the economic benefits due to the increase of electricity sell to the national grid in the strong dry seasons. This study was carried out using the Virtual Sugarcane Biorefinery (VSB) modeling software employed for the simulation of agricultural and industrial parameters in integrated alternatives for the sugarcane industry, which was adjusted to the Colombian conditions to allow simulating the current electricity production in the sugarcane mills in the assessed region. The economic assessment of the co-firing process in the cogeneration system demonstrates that this industrial process represents an opportunity to increase the economic benefits by about 26%. However, the coal combustion in the boiler generates about 54% of the total GHG emissions for the consumption of coal, whereas the burning of bagasse corresponds to only 5%.