Your choices so far:
1 Process heat (> 1000 °C); 2 Electricity
| What is your resource? | What do you want to deliver? | What is the service the customer wants? |
| Biomass (digestible sludge) | District cooling | Comfortable indoor climate |
| Biomass (fermentable sludge) | District heating | Electricity |
| Biomass (solid) | 2 Electricity | Process cooling (< 0 °C) |
| Geothermal | Fuel: Gaseous | Process heat/steam (50 - 150 °C) |
| Sunshine | Fuel: Liquid | Process heat (150 - 1000 °C) |
| Water | Fuel: Solid | 1 Process heat (> 1000 °C) |
| Wind | Local cooling (ind. house) | Transport |
| Residual oils/fats etc | Local heating (ind. house) |
For some high-temperature processes, like electro-steel production, electric arc welding in ship-building, the production of synthetic diamonds at high pressure and a number of others, electricity cannot be replaced as the energy carrier. The process demands on exergy content simply excludes all other energy carriers.
But for a number of processes such as the burning of ceramics, glass melting or the melting of metals for casting, there will often be alternatives to the use of electricity.
Before selling electricity, the un-threatened king of the energy carriers, the real need of the customer should first be identified.
When the main aim of the energy supply is to produce and sell electricity to such process industries that really need and fully appreciate it, then only large-scale production will be of interest. The technologies to be considered then become, in priority order: 1-hydroelectricity, 2-wind-power, 3-solid or digestible biomass in large-scale CHP or tri-generation plants.
Even though FAME could be used to replace fossil oil in condensing power production, this is not used to any extent worth mentioning. Instead, the FAME-production is directed towards the transportation sector.