Abstract
Biomass residues from agriculture and agroindustry are suitable sources for the production of energy because they don’t compete with the food chain and they are produced cheaply. Their transformation into heat and power or energy vectors depends on morphology and composition. Shells of almonds and hazelnuts can be easily gasified in fixed beds because of their low fines content and high gas permeation. In this work we investigated the overall process performances and syngas composition, especially the H2/CO ratio, by changing the air and steam supply. The tests were carried out in a pilot updraft gasifier having a capacity of treating up to 20–30 kg/h of biomass. Experimental data were worked out by surface response analysis as function of the equivalence ratios (ER) in relation to the complete combustion and water reaction. By using only air at ER(O2) 0.24 the ratio H2/CO in the syngas was 0.33 while adding steam at ER(H2O) 0.28 the ratio reached a value of 1.0. The energy conversion efficiency from solid to gas and oils reached maximum values of 76% and 28%, respectively. As anticipated by TGA, hazelnut shells produced less organic volatiles and gas efficiency was generally higher than for almond shells.
Highlights
Syngas, or synthetic gas, is a flexible feedstock for the chemical and energy industry
Liquid fuels can be produced from syngas trough the Fischer–Tropsch synthesis (FT) a catalytic reaction discovered over ninety years ago but still very relevant because of the demand for clean fuels and the emerging affordability of converting on-site natural gas [1]
Coal gasification technologies cannot be adapted to biomass gasification because of the different characteristic of the feedstocks, such as particle density and pyrolysis behavior [6,7]
Summary
Synthetic gas, is a flexible feedstock for the chemical and energy industry. The high content of hydrogen and carbon monoxide makes syngas suitable for feeding fuel cells and Integrated Gasification Combined Cycles (IGCCs) that efficiently generate power [2]. Is syngas a flexible energetic and chemical vector, and the process that generates it, called gasification, is flexible regarding the type of feedstock. Several processes for thermal conversion of biomass, which provide directly heat, power or even energy vectors, like pyrolytic oil, torrefied biomass, and syngas, are available. In the process of biorefining to produce liquid fuels or other chemicals with the fermentation route, the residual stream of lignin and other unconverted fibers is thermally converted [4,5]. Fixed bed gasification is one of the most suitable process to exploit
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