Call for Papers

Biomass to energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is a critically important technology for global decarbonisation and to limit average temperature rises to 2°C. However, there is a significant gap between the commercial experience to date and the scale of ambition; in terms of rate of implementation, scale of facility required and breadth of technologies that might be considered. While the potential of BECCS to date has been extensively discussed and evaluated from the perspective of econometric, partial equilibrium and other energy-economic modelling approaches, there has been relatively little focus on the engineering and scientific challenges associated with the implementation of BECCS. In short term, modular BECCS installations would offer local biomass supply chain and CO₂ utilisation flexibility for a range of feedstocks and CO₂ products. Longer-term, a more ambitious scale-up could be envisaged with significant investment in large utility-scale facilities that would likely make use of centralised CO₂ transport, pipeline and storage infrastructure. A 250 MWe unit would be similar in size to existing units at large power stations, and 12 of these (e.g. 3 plants each with 4 x 250 MWe units or 12 plants each of 250 MWe) would remove 20 Mt CO₂ per year. With such a significant potential deployment of BECCS there will inevitably be scope for consideration of different scales, technologies, feedstocks and configurations. There will be some common challenges and some specific to certain pathways. So this special issue is developed to establish what the key BECCS innovation needs are to support deployment at the scale envisaged in coming decades. This allows the identification of challenges of BECCS development and present novel solutions to these challenges which could support deployment.

Contributory authors are invited to submit Research Papers, Short communications, Letters and Review articles to this special issue.

Important Dates:

Submission open: 1^st July 2021

Submission deadline: 31st January 2022

Submission Guideline:

All papers must be submitted through the Biomass and Bioenergy website: https://www.editorialmanager.com/jbab/default.aspx Make sure to upload your paper to special Issue “BECCS-2021” as the Article Type. Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. All papers will be refereed through a peer-review process. For more information, please see the Author Guidelines page.

This special issue on advances in biomass to energy with carbon capture and storage will identify key engineering challenges of BECCS with the following scopes:

• Feedstock flexibility of biomass
• Advanced biomass gasification
• Syngas clean up in particular about tar removal
• Efficiency improvement
• Biomass transportation and storage
• Post combustion carbon capture
• The production of dispatchable fuels
• Ethics of BECCS
• Supplies chain analysis
• Techno-economic analysis
• Catalytic conversion

Guest editors:

Dr. Chunfei Wu, Queen’s University Belfast, c.wu@qub.ac.uk

Prof. Meihong Wang, University of Sheffield, meihong.wang@sheffield.ac.uk

Dr. Fatih Gulec, University of Nottingham, Fatih.Gulec1@nottingham.ac.uk

Dr. Hongman Sun, China University of Petroleum (East China), hongman.sun@upc.edu.cn

Miss Qi Huang from Queen’s University of Belfast has visited Professor Bien Tan’s group at Huazhong University of Science and Technology for five months. The EU RISE secondment provided Qi a great platform to expand her research project for light triggered CO₂ capture and release. During these five months exchanging, Qi has successfully synthesized the photo responsive polymers and characterized them.

Yuanting Qiao from Queen’s University Belfast is visiting the Institute for Themal Power Engineering of Zhejiang University from November 2020 to April 2021, where she conducted Integrated Carbon Capture and Utilization (ICCU) research. She has attended research meetings in Zhejiang University, and have been trained about absorption of CO₂ in large-scale industrial application.

On 19th December 20202, 15 partners of the project met on-line to discuss research activities and potential collaborations. It provides a great opportunity for future collaborations in relation to secondment, new research collaborations and develop a sustain network for low-carbon technologies development. A few pictures are attached below.

On 25^th September 2020, project partners met the EU Project Officer, Mr Radu DIACONESCU. Due to Covid-19, the meeting was on-line using MS Teams.

The meeting agenda and the key presentation are attached below. During the meeting, key issues such as WP implementation, secondment, events and financial aspects were discussed. In general, the progress of the project is satisfactory, although the delivery of project has been significantly affected by the Covid-19. The EU Officer also talked to a few secondees who have visited Xi’an Jiaotong University. A key action was to update the Year 1 report by including more details of the implementation of WPs including deviations. Possible extension of the project has also been discussed. However, the decision will depend on following evaluation of the situation related to Covid-19.