Project PANACEA
PANACEA – Polygeneration fueled with biomass from waste In urban wastewater treatment plants. ♦ Finances by Ministero dello Sviluppo Economico, Ricerca di Sistema Elettrico Nazionale, Bando 2014. ♦ Project details: The purification of urban waste water has become a growing problem both in relation to the need to build new plants and adapt existing ones to respond to the increasingly stringent initiatives of the European Community, and to the energy and environmental costs associated with these systems. Another problem is that of high energy consumption, both electrical and thermal. The analysis of the management costs of different purification plants shows that around 25-30% of the total is connected to the electricity requirement, which is why biogas is used in plants that have an anaerobic digestion section. generated for the production of electricity. However, this production is not sufficient to cover the plant’s energy needs both for the modest amount of biogas that can be produced and for its relatively low calorific value. Further costs, in the measure of 20-25%, are related to the treatment and disposal of the sewage sludge in landfills, to reduce which thermal drying systems are spreading. Read more