ENEA - Agenzia nazionale per le nuove tecnologie, l'energia e lo sviluppo economico sostenibile (Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development)
ENEA is the Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development. The Agency’s activities are mainly focused on Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy Sources, Nuclear Energy, Climate and the Environment, Safety and Health, New Technologies. It hosts over 2700 staff employees, distributed in 9 research centers all over the national territory. It conducts research and innovation activities, and provides public administration, enterprises and citizens with its advanced services. ENEA hosts experimental laboratories and facilities. R&D activity related to the exploitation of biomass feedstocks and biogenic fractions, are carried out within the mission and scope of the Division of Bioenergy, Biorefinery and Green Chemistry. The area of interest of the Division mainly concerns the study and development of both thermochemical (i.e. combustion, gasification, pyrolisys) and biochemical conversion processes (i.e. aerobic fermentation and anaerobic digestion), as well as new processes aimed at developing the value-chain of the green chemistry from biomass. Activities regarding feedstocks pretreatments, such as steam explosion and torrefaction, are also conducted. Many programs/projects on bio-energy, bio-fuels and hydrogen technologies production and utilisation, have been and are presently carried out within the goals of national and international R&TD initiatives (e.g. HORIZON 2020, 7FP, Programme Agreements between the Italian Ministry for Economic Development and ENEA, European Energy Research Alliance (EERA), IEA Tasks. The activities are also carried out in co-operation with industry, academic institutions and research organisations. Regarding the subject of thermochemical conversion processes, current activity are mainly focused on gasification and pyrolysis and are carried out at the Trisaia Research Centre (Rotondella, Italy). On gasification the activities are mainly focused on CHP applications, production of advanced energy carriers, both liquids and gaseous, such as FT liquids, Methanol, DME, BioSNG and H2. On these topics, large attention is devoted to aspects which are known be critical for the achievement of full maturity of the technology, such as gasification reactor design, gas cleaning and conditioning, gas use/conversion and process integration, process modelling. On pyrolysis the main targets concern the use of the process to recover energy and materials from different raw feedstocks such as biomass, urban and industrial wastes. In accordance with the interest and demand from the productive sectors of the economy, main targeted materials are biochar, bio-oil, activated carbon, carbon fibers, high-value ceramic materials(e.g. Silicon Carbide).
