Assessment of the energy potential of agricultural biomass residues in Turkey

Agricultural biomass residue based energy generation is one of the major focus areas of renewable energy in different countries around the world. A large quantity of biomass residue is generated from agricultural crop production. However, the biomass residues are the distributed resources with variation in spatio-temporal availability and its characteristics which their energy potential depends on. Biomass residues are emerged after harvesting of main crops as stalks, straw, stems and leaves, husks, cobs and etc. In this study, agricultural biomass residues energy potential was explored for Turkey using conducted studies of agricultural biomass residues characteristics in several countries located at different geographic regions. Data on characteristics of agricultural biomass residues were used from 16 European Union countries, as well as in India, Cameroon, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Uganda and Turkey. Some residue characteristics such as residue product ratios, moisture levels, and lower heating calorific values of dry matter were taken into account. Furthermore, a mathematical model was defined for the calculation of the energy potential of Turkey's agricultural biomass residues. Theoretical biomass amount and theoretical energy potential, as well as available energy potential values of agricultural biomass residues were determined. The total amounts of biomass residues obtained from arable field crops and horticultural crops in Turkey were estimated as 59,432 kilotonne and 15,652 kilotonne respectively. The theoretical energy potential of these all agricultural biomass residues were calculated as 908,119 TJ and 90,354 TJ, respectively. The available energy potentials from agricultural biomass residues were calculated as 298,955 TJ for arable agricultural field crops and 65,491 TJ for horticultural crops. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.