Avaliação de desempenho de um grupo gerador à biocombustíveis para geração de energia elétrica distribuída

Abstract

The search for new renewable fuels in response to growing global energy demand, in addition to environmental issues, strongly emphasizes the importance of developing alternative applications for the energy generation sector, particularly those derived from biomass, given the enormous potential to compose blends, with or even fully replace, fossil fuels. Biodiesel presents itself as a biofuel with possibilities of application for distributed electric power generation, thus opening it’s range of use, which should be explored in order to motivate a market beyond the production for compulsory blending to fossil diesel, blends present in Brazil since 2008, and mainly, motivate the industry sector in the country, generating new jobs and income. In this study, a power generation system was built, and it’s main component, a 360 kVA power generator, used for testing and feasibility analysis of B100 biodiesel fuel, as an alternative source for application to the energy compensation system, that has been regulated by ANEEL since 2012. After building the system, a battery of tests was structured, standardized in 15 and 30 minutes in duration, in order to find the energy rate, in kWh/L, in scenarios of constant and variable power. The performance results of the generator set were evaluated. Calculations were carried out to obtain the energy rate of pure biodiesel fuel, varying the power of the system from 50 to 200 kW, to evaluate the best performance configuration for the system. The best energy rate found was 3.89 kWh/L, for power of 200 kW. In addition to the practical tests, consultations were carried out with the regulatory agencies in order to verify possible restrictions in relation to the pioneer application in Brazil. Finally, an analysis was carried out on the revision of the current regulation, expected to come into force, in the first half of 2020.