Real-time evaluation of the renewable energy fraction produced by Waste-To-Energy plants

Abstract

The introduction of the biogenic mass among the renewable energy sources has focused the attention on the energy production related to this resource. This issue is currently subject to standardization both at the Italian and European level. The renewable energy produced by Waste-To-Energy plants can be evaluated with software named OBAMA 4.0 (Optimized BAlance Method Application) which is able to calculate the biogenic mass content in a waste fuel and the corresponding amount of energy obtained from this content. The software is based on an optimized mass and energy balance model and it is able to interface to the acquisition systems DCS and other standard information gained from the WTE plant. The comparison with radiocarbon analysis performed on real WTE plants has allowed us to validate the software under controlled conditions; the evaluation was also extended to plants under normal operating conditions using the data set provided by operators collected from the monitoring system.