R. Cornelissen

The objective of this paper is to define the exergetic pay back period. This period can be used for energy efficient systems as part of a more general assessment also including financial aspects. For the conservation of the exergy of natural resources investments with a shorter exergetic pay back period will be preferable. To determine exergy savin...

Biogas production in agricultural biogas plants generates digestate-liquid waste containing organic matter and mineral nutrients. Utilisation of the digestate on farm fields adjacent to the biogas plants is limited. Therefore, bio-refineries implement advanced forms of digestate processing, including precipitation of struvite (MgNH 4 PO 4. 6H 2 O)....

This paper presents the results of an interdisciplinary study aimed at assessing the possibility of using duckweed to purify and recover nutrients from the effluent remaining after struvite precipitation and ammonia stripping from a liquid fraction of anaerobic digestate in a biorefinery located at a Dutch dairy cattle production farm. The nutritio...

This paper presents the results of a pot experiment aimed at the assessment of the agronomic and economic effectiveness of ammonium sulphate from an agro bio-refinery (Bio-AS). The Bio-AS was obtained by means of the ammonia stripping process from effluent after struvite precipitation from a liquid fraction of digestate. The agronomic effectiveness...

This paper presents the results of a pot experiment aimed at the assessment of the fertilizer value of struvite, a precipitation product obtained from a liquid fraction of the digestate. The effects of struvite (STR), struvite + ammonium sulphate (STR + N) and ammonium phosphate (AP) treatments were examined on maize and grass cultivation on silty...

Biogas is an alternative source of energy for fossil fuels. In the process of transforming organic materials into biogas significant amounts of valuable digestate are produced. In order to make the whole process sustainable digestate should be utilized this is a constraining factor in the development of the biogas industry. Consequently, there is a...

A web-based service was deployed to appropriately size bio-gas plant capacity and perform its economic viability and return on investment based on biomass availability. The tool is based on accepted biogas plant engineering design practice, incorporating the effects of incentives resulting from energy policies for member nations of the European Uni...

The use of residual biomass to produce bioenergy is a field of ever growing importance. One of the interesting residual biomass streams is corn stover. In some countries it is used as feed for animals, but in the United States of America an abundance of corn stover exists and the conversion of corn stover to ethanol is a subject of practice and res...

In this article a new method for performing energy saving studies is introduced, named the integral approach. This approach is a combination of exergy analysis, pinch analysis, process intensification and control engineering. This approach is illustrated by a case study. It was found that exergy analysis at the level of process functions can act as...

A desktop study has been performed to estimate the cost of biomass-to-fuel plants producing methanol, dimethylether (DME) or hydrogen. Two different designs have been distinguished. One design based on the technology of today and one design based on the technology of tomorrow. The investment costs of the near-future design are lower, but the yearly...

A desktop study has been performed to analyse the performance of biomass-to-fuel plants producing methanol, dimethylether (DME) or hydrogen. Two different designs have been made. One design based on the technology of today and one design based on the technology of tomorrow. Mass and energy balances are presented for both designs producing all three...

In this article, the application of the concept of exergy is discussed for the built environment. In the Netherlands, the efficiency of the thermal systems for buildings is assessed using a method based on energy. A disadvantage of this method is that the degradation of energy is not shown. As a consequence, a false impression of the causes of inef...

The application of partial oxidation in a gas turbine (PO-GT) in the production of synthesis gas for methanol production is explored. In PO-GT, methane is compressed, preheated, partial oxidized and expanded. For the methanol synthesis a 12% gain in thermal efficiency has been calculated for the PO-GT process, while the product cost decrease with 7...

In this article a new tool has been developed to calculate the sustainability of a process plant from an exergetic point of view. Herefore the renewable factor of exergy resources has been defined. It is shown that the depletion of natural resources can be determined by the concept of exergy. For process plants the EeoChem efficiency has been defin...

In this paper the value of the exergetic life cycle assessment (ELCA) has been analysed. The ELCA uses the framework of the life cycle assessment (LCA) and can be seen as the exergy analysis of a complete life cycle. The value of the ELCA besides the LCA has been discussed. It is shown that the ELCA is a more appropriate instrument to quantify the...

Life-cycle assessment (LCA) has been developed in the last decades. A comprehensive framework has been established to enable the execution of the analysis. In this framework the concept of exergy or similar thermodynamic concepts have not yet been introduced. It is shown in this paper that for sustainable development the depletion of exergy reservo...

The objective of this paper is to show that for the optimal design of an energy system, where there is a trade-off between exergy saving during operation and exergy use during construction of the energy system, exergy analysis and life cycle analysis should be combined. An exergy optimisation of a heat exchanger has been carried out on the basis of...

The method of exergy analysis, as it is used nowadays, has been developed by Szargut [1]. He and his co-workers have analysed several plants systematically. In his method the complete production chain for the product has been analysed. Another systematically analysis of process plants is performed by Hedman [2] in the USA. His work is limited to th...

Exergy analysis and life cycle analysis have been developed separately. Exergy analysis has been described extensively in the books of Kotas [1] and Szargut [2]. Life cycle analysis (LCA) has been described by Consoli et al. [3] and Heijungs et al. [4]. The latter one gives a detailed methodology to use in a LCA. The methodology in the LCA includes...

Marquart, N. E., & Cornelissen, R. (1999). Exergie als wapen in de strijd tegen verspilling. Energietechniek, 77(1), 28-30.

In this paper the efficiency of the conventional textile washing process is examined. This is done by using the cumulative exergy consumption as developed by Szargut et al. Exergy is the quantity of work that can be extracted from material or energy by reversible processes. Cumulative exergy consumption shows the exergy consumption in all productio...

An exergy analysis is performed to analyse the possibilities of fuel saving in the cryogenic distillation process, which is the main method of air separation. It is shown that more than half of the exergy loss takes place in the liquefaction unit and almost one-third in the air compression unit. Minor exergy losses are taking place in the distillat...

The objective of this paper is to show that for the optimal design of an energy system, where there is a trade-off between exergy saving during operation and exergy use during construction of the energy system, exergy analysis and life cycle analysis should be combined. The two methods are often used separately, but a limited number of studies has...

It is the objective of this thesis to demonstrate exergy analysis as a powerful instrument to obtain sustainable development. An important aspect of sustainable development is the minimisation of irreversibilities caused by the use of non-renewables. In order to limit the scope of this thesis sustainable development associated with production is co...

The objective of this paper is to define the exergetic pay back period. This period can be used for energy efficient systems as part of a more general assessment also including financial aspects. For the conservation of the exergy of natural resources investments with a shorter exergetic pay back period will be preferable. To determine exergy savin...