Evaluation of Oxygen and Steam Fed Biomass Gasification Within Energy, Water, and Food Nexus

With the anticipated growth in population to reach 9 billion by 2050, the demand for energy, water, and food (EWF) resources will continue to rise. This has encouraged the deployment of alternative energy sources to limit resource depletion and enhance system efficiency. Biomass is a promising substitute for fossil fuels that can support sustainable development. It can be processed through gasification to generate high-energy syngas that has the potential to produce sustainable energy and chemicals. Sustainability assessment of the biomass gasification strategy is crucial to quantify the impacts of the different pathways on the EWF resources. This study benchmarks the effects of oxygen, steam, and oxygen/steam fed biomass gasification on EWF resources against economic performance through a sustainability optimisation metric. The approach enables the maximisation of sustainability indices, while ensuring a positive generation of EWF resources. The study also seeks to optimise the sustainability of the gasification process from the EWF approach through the blending of biomass resources. The results prove the excellence of steam-only gasification in supporting EWF nexus. Moreover, a change in the results is indicated when oxygen/steam and oxygen-only gasification options report higher SWROIM than steam-only gasification at a weighting factor of 2 for water. The utilisation of the sustainability metric in addressing the benchmark between the different biomass gasification media opens great horizon for more utilisation in the energy sources recovery subject.