Abstract
In the delicate context of climate change, biomass gasification has been demonstrated to be a very useful technology to produce power and hydrogen. Nevertheless, in literature, there is a lack of a flexible and fast but accurate model of biomass gasification that can be used with all the combinations of oxidizing agents, taking into account both organic and inorganic contaminants, and able to give results that are more realistic. In order to do that, a model of biomass gasification has been developed using the chemical engineering software Aspen Plus. The developed model is based on the Gibbs free energy minimization applying the restricted quasi-equilibrium approach via Data-Fit regression from experimental data. The simulation results obtained, considering different mixes of gasifying agents, were compared and validated against experimental data reported in literature for the most advanced fluidized bed technology. The maximum discrepancy value obtained for hydrogen, with respect to experimental data, is of 8%, and all the other values reached by the developed simulations, considering both organic and inorganic compounds, are in good agreement with literature data. The gas yield reached by the developed simulation is in the range of 1.1–1.3 Nm3/kg.
Highlights
Every year, a great amount of agro-industrial, municipal and forestry residues are treated as waste; instead, they can be recovered and used to produce thermal and electrical energy by biological or thermo-chemical conversion processes [1,2]
Availability of biomass on a significant scale; Low heat value (LHV), which has to be high, so biomass with lower humidity is preferable; Chemical composition, which has to be low in sulfur, chlorine and ash; Size and shape of biomass, which have to be uniform in order to ensure homogeneous and efficient gasification and bulk density, which has to be comparable with that of the gasifier bed, even if the latter can be adjusted via pretreatment and feeding systems
The lab-scale reactor used by Karatas and Akgun was a fluidized-bed, at 1 bar and 800 ◦ C, and the biomass feedstock used was walnut shells, which have very similar characteristics with respect to hazelnut shells
Summary
A great amount of agro-industrial, municipal and forestry residues are treated as waste; instead, they can be recovered and used to produce thermal and electrical energy by biological or thermo-chemical conversion processes [1,2]. Among thermo-chemical processes, biomass gasification is one of the most efficacious conversion technologies because of lower investment costs while maintaining the ability for high-rate fuel gas production [5,6]. This process utilizes oxidizing agents (oxygen, air, steam or a mix of them) at high temperature (in the range of 750–1000 ◦ C) to produce a fuel gas, called syngas, mostly rich in hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, methane and steam along with several unwanted by-products [3]. Process and system simulation models have obtained great interest in the prediction of performance, giving a good description of both chemical and physical phenomena
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