Gasification as possible technological solution for driftwood management in bodies of waters

Abstract

This work studies the possibility of the thermochemical conversion, through gasification, of wood waste that accumulates along river bodies. Thanks to the startup SEADS (Sea Defense Solutions), tree branches were collected from the Lamone river (province of Ravenna - IT) in various conservation states. The wood wastes were pre-treated through a chipping process to make them suitable for chemical/physical analyses and subsequent gasification process using the All Power Labs Power Pallet 30 (PP30) commercial micro-gasifier. The elemental analysis show how the wood material undergoes a certain chemical degradation due to weathering, which leads to an HHV of 18.76 MJ/kg, lower than virgin biomass. The gasification process was firstly simulated through a numerical method that gave positive outputs: syngas with a higher heating value of 4.61 MJ/kg and a gasification efficiency of 63.03%. A subsequent gasification test was used to validate the numerical model that was also used to estimate the electrical (18.91%) and thermal (25.21%) efficiency of a cogeneration power plant, powered by the PP30 gasification reactor.