Biomass Power and Heating Plants using an Inverse Gas Turbine Cycle

Large areas of Austria are covered with pine forest which serve as raw materials for paper mills and wood industry in general and in harvesting these trees a lot of biomass is obtained which presents the useful fuel of thermal power plants. Since this type of fuel requires high costs of collection and has relatively low heat content only small plants can be envisaged which will be supplied locally. So the idea is to build a gas turbine plant on the basis of turbo charger component but with a specific cycle which allows the biomass to be burned on a grid at atmospheric pressure, the expansion taking place in an inverse gas turbine process through the gas turbine and then cooling the gases and condensation of humidity followed by recompression to atmospheric pressure. Diverse design studies have been done and the design of a pilot plant is well under way.