Sustainability of a consortial anaerobic fermentation plant in Sicily

Sicily, the greatest island in the Mediterranean Sea, has a great availability of biomasses exploitable for energetic purposes. Actually, the most used technology is represented by the anaerobic fermentation process, which offers the possibility of reusing residual biomasses coming from agro-industrial processes, so joining to the unquestionable environmental advantages, possible reduction in production costs and new income flows for farmers. All anaerobic digestion plants are mainly based on livestock sewage, available across all the year. So, knowing that Sicilian livestock farms usually have a consistency less than 100 heads of cattle, in this paper it is evaluated, by means of simulations, the possibility of feeding a consortial anaerobic fermentation plant with the biomasses available within 10 km from the installation site, chosen in the South area of the Syracuse province. The simulations showed that the residual biomasses coming from livestock farms, oil mills, wineries and dairies, could sustain a plant of about 760 up to 1,460 kW, depending on the composition of the digester diet.