Can you take advantage of the bushes?

mound cleaning

The clearing of scrub and cleaning of mountains can generate very abundant biomass resources, according to the Enerbioscrub project

There is biomass in cities, which are real factories of usable waste; and there is also no doubt beyond the urban: in the agroindustrial farms, in the pig farms, in the orange juice factories, in the sawmills, in the canning industry and in the olive groves, for example. But there is still more, because after all these bioenergetic sources  -and before reaching the deepest part of the forest- there is the bushes. And that's where Enerbioscrub arrives, a European project that took its first steps in June of 2014 and that ends now, next December, after three and a half years of work.

Enerbioscrub is a very unique initiative. The Center for the Development of Renewable Energies participates; the Biomass Energy Valorization Association (Avebiom); the companies Gestamp and Forest Biomass; the cooperative Agresta and the City council of Fabero (Leon). The ultimate goal of Enerbioscrubis to find out if it is possible to take advantage - in an environmentally and economically sustainable way - of the immense bio-energetic resources that the Iberian scrub contains: in Spain there are ten million hectares of scrubland (non-wooded forest land reaches 18,5% of all forestry). In short, a lot of biomass.

Ceder-Ciemat and company have been working during these three years in several areas of Castilla, Galicia and León. Thus, they have collected brooms in the Navas del Marqués (Ávila), heather in Fabero (León), jara in the province of Soria, gorse in Galicia (Lugo) and heather and brooms in Figueruelo de Arriba (Zamora). It gathers to then test with these raw materials in the biomass plant that Gestamp has in Garray (Soria), in the pellet plant that Biomasa Forestal operates in As Pontes (Coruña) and in Fabero's heat networks and Navas del Marqués.


"What we have tried is to do a demonstration project. So the first of the actions was to test with harvesting machinery, which is a bit of the crux of the matter: what we wanted to do is to verify that the machines could do the clearing and the collection of the biomass at the same time. Check it and study its viability, economically and technically. Then came the tests in the laboratory and in the pilot facilities with the biomasses that we collected. What we have done has been to characterize them, to specify what energy content they have, and ashes, minerals ... And, from there, to make combustion tests in domestic or industrial boilers, as well as to manufacture pellets. And, finally, there are R & D actions, such as, for example, the inventory, which we intend to allow us to estimate the resource in scrub areas. " This is explained by the project coordinator, Luis Saúl Esteban Pascual (Ceder-Ciemat Biomass Unit).

Well, given all this, these are the conclusions reached:

Conclusions

  • Brush clearing and forest cleaning can generate very abundant biomass resources that currently are little or no value.
  • Is it environmentally sustainable to clear? It is still early to say, but everything indicates that it is positive if it is done in an orderly manner.
  • The biomass obtained from the shrubs has medium-high qualities for energy uses and could compete with pellets and wood chips.
  • The mechanized exploitation of the biomass of many shrubs can be profitable in the short-medium term (learning curve still ahead).
  • It is necessary that administrations take the issue seriously. We recommend helping the owners and invest more in clearing that can be partially self-financed with biomass, mycological resources and beekeeping.
  • Overcome inertias The scrub is not wood. Your treatment is different. Specific guidelines and regulations are required for its management, such as permission to temporarily store it in the forest.
  •  When financing: more silvopastoral treatments and fewer repopulations. It is necessary to take care of the masses that we have before creating new ones.

 

Source: www.energias-renovables.com

Further information:

tecnico@avebiom.org