Sustainable energy recovery of agriculture residues in small companies: The case of vines pruning

Residual biomass from agriculture represents a significant yet underutilized renewable energy resource. In this context, gasification emerges as an effective method for converting woody biomass - such as residues from pruning - into electrical and thermal energy or storing its energy content in the form of biofuel. However, the limited availability of residues and their collection over a short period means that energy recovery would cover only a small fraction of the energy demand of most farms and agro-industrial companies. Additionally, the high initial investment costs significantly limit the widespread adoption of biomass gasification systems, especially in small companies. For this reason, this work aims to propose an efficient energy management strategy based on the sharing of an energy recovery system, to make it a feasible and sustainable solution also for small companies. The results show that the proposed strategy is feasible, with self-supply of 10% of the global yearly demand of the served companies and a simple payback of the solution lower than 9 years.