Viability analysis of rice husk power plant for rice miller

Abstract

As Thailand’s economic has steadily growth, it also brings an increase in electricity demand. Furthermore, the increasing of demand, it could be foreseen that the cost of electricity would also increase. To sufficiency increase the domestic power generation, government has a policy to shift the power generator to private companies or other minor companies to reduce cost of investment by government. Rice miller has produced husk by product of milling rice which could be used as biomass fuel for electricity generation. This thesis aim to present a method of how to select the appropriate machine and equipment for biomass power generator. In this case study, the systems taken into consideration are gasification and general system that use biomass fuel to generate steam for moving the turbine. Project evaluation consist of determine Life Cycle Cost (LCC) through capital recovery and operating/maintenance cost, salvage value and social cost. These two different systems were taken for comparison. The result of LCC evaluation shows that in case of the power generator scale 500 KW, gasification system has least life cycle cost.