Biomass-based gaseous fuel for hybrid renewable energy systems: An overview and future research opportunities

Growth in global energy demand, with major fossil fuel consumption, has induced detrimental environmental and social impacts. Therefore, in recent years, technologies focused on renewable energy utilization, including biomass energy, have evolved to meet the energy requirements. Bioenergy-based power generation systems are among the best-unutilized configurations to diminish reliance on fossil fuels. However, it is difficult to select a biomass-based configuration for economical, sustainable, and reliable power generation. Understanding different possible configurations of biomass-based energy systems, design parameters, system research gaps, and integration challenges in biomass-based energy systems are important for further development and propagation. This paper presents a critical review of biomass-based different hybrid configurations with solar, wind, fuel cell, micro-hydro, geothermal, and diesel generator, and various designing parameters, challenges, and gaps with future scope. To restrict the scope of the review, only the gasification and anaerobic digestion related biomass electricity generation systems are considered. The analysis indicates that the biomass-based hybrid energy systems can provide an eco-friendly and cost-effective solution, especially for off-grid rural electrification. The solar radiation, load demand, fuel price, capacity shortage, interest rate, wind speed, biomass quantity, and electricity rate are among the most critical designing parameters in biomass-based energy systems. The study provides valuable information to designers, researchers, and policy makers on the latest design constraints and relevant policies relating to biomass-based hybrid energy systems.