Hybrid Biomass and Natural Gas Combined Cycles: Performance and Economic Analysis

ABSTRACT The performance of a cogeneration system is explored in this study by analyzing the impact of natural gas fuel and synthesis gas from renewable biomass sources. The hybrid drive system employs a combination of a gas‐powered internal combustion engine and a Stirling‐type alpha external combustion engine to maximize efficiency and performance. The system is compared to a similar cogeneration system using natural gas as a power source. Energy and economic perspectives are used to evaluate the systems. The results show that using synthesis gas as fuel in the internal combustion engine provides significant advantages in terms of energy and economics. Compared to natural gas, using synthesis gas can reduce primary energy consumption by 40.55%. Additionally, the proposed system using synthetic gas fuel shows a reduction of 83.98% in fuel consumption costs.