Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/rser Study on applicability of biomass in iron ore sintering process Gaurav Jha ⁎ , S. Soren Department of Fuel and Mineral Engineering, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Conventional or fossil fuels MNRE Alternate fuels Biomass Sintering ABSTRACT India as a developing economic power, has to rely much on its energy sector for growth and development. The growth is largely interlinked with the availability of energy and its judicious utilization. Also involved is the question whether the available energy is environmentally acceptable and technically viable. With the growth of country's economy, per capita power consumption has also increased resulting greater demands for power. India's power sector is mainly dependent on conventional or fossil fuels i.e., coal (60.1%) and gas (8.7%) (2015). India has around 10% of the world's coal reserves that will last for about another 30–40 years at the present consumption rate. The use of conventional fossil fuels has a negative impact on the environment due to the emission of harmful greenhouse gases. On the other hand, according to the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE), Government of India, the country has untapped source of renewable energies such as, wind, solar power, nuclear energy and biomass. Globally, depletion of conventional fuel resources, is increasingly turning the focus on non-conventional sources of energy. The present paper is a review of biomass energy, its sources and its energy efficiency. Even though sources of biomass fuels are widely available all across India, these are still largely underutilized. According to the available statistics, in India the share of renewable energy has increased from 7.8% to 12.3% during 2012-13 and to 12.95% as on 31st March 2014, this paper also highlights the challenges and advantages of biomass energy over conventional fuels as well as utilization and applicability of biomass in sintering process as a replacement for coke. 1. Introduction India is the fifth largest power producer in the world [1–3]. Production of energy in India has rapidly increased to 263.66 GW (as on march 2015) from 223 GW (2012-13) and 98 GW (1997-98) [1,2]. The main source of energy in India is coal and gas with a share of 60.1% and 8.7% respectively [2]. With an increasing requirement of coal from power and steel sector, load over coal production and utilization has significantly increased sharply enhancing the level of greenhouse gas emissions, thereby adversely affecting the environ- ment. Increased production of coal is fast depleting the coal resources as well [4–54]. To overcome this ensuing crisis, the fast exhausting coal (fossil fuel) stock has to be replaced completely or partially with alternative or renewable energy sources [51]. The need of replacement has shifted focus to the search for development of a sustainable technology by utilizing renewable sources. Biomass availability in India is estimated to be about 500 MT/year [1,13,32]. According to the MNRE, currently 18 GW of energy values are getting generated from agricultural residues [13,32]. Below detailed statistics of state- wise estimated potential and installed capacity of biomass are provided in Table 1 and Fig. 1. Biomass as a replacement for the conventional fossil fuel is gaining much attention because it is renewable and a clean source of energy [4–52]. Despite its neutrality or reasonably environment friendly nature, biomass energy has certain drawbacks as well, such as high moisture and H content, contaminated and low quality sources, low energy density, low calorific value, varying composition and properties and availability of sources etc. In order to find suitable source for generation of power, different types of biomass are characterized on the basis of their structure and chemical composition. [18]. A number of peer reviewed journal [4–54] have highlighted the efficacy of using biomass as a replacement for coal. So far, studies on the feasibility of biomass energy and availability of literature on this subject have been limited. However, in general, it is believed that biomass can optimally replace 20% of coal by sintering process. The present study focuses on utilizing biomass as a fuel source and replacing coal by carrying out sintering process on metallurgical coke as a fuel source. Frohlichova et al., [4] and Lu et al., [5] proposed conversion to renewable energy sources like biomass and carried out a number of studies to suggest replacement of coke with biomass. For investiga- tions, a number of biomass sources were collected. These were characterized by means of proximate and ultimate analysis as well as GCV (gross calorific value). It has been found that biomass of 1 mm- size is the most preferable, Zandi et al., [6]. Subsequently, suitability of http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.05.246 Received 31 March 2016; Received in revised form 31 January 2017; Accepted 26 May 2017 ⁎ Corresponding author. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 80 (2017) 399–407 1364-0321/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. MARK