Gasification of Jhama Coal using Statistical Design of Experiment

Abstract

In the present investigation, an attempt has been made to explore the effect of ash content on the gasification characteristics of Jhama coal. The two levels of ash content were selected for this study. The samples were obtained by gravity separation of Jhama coal. These two samples (clean Jhama coal: low ash and reject Jhama coal: high ash) were subjected to gasification at different temperatures for different time intervals, and carbon dioxide gas was used as a gasifying agent. The effect of temperature and residence time on gasification of two samples with different ash contents has been investigated. The values of activation energy of low-ash and high-ash Jhama coal samples have been obtained in the range of 51–66 kJ/mol and 37–43 kJ/mol, respectively. In addition, design of experiments was performed using response surface methodology (RSM) under 23 full factorial designs. RSM-based empirical models were developed for low-ash and high-ash Jhama coal samples to correlate process variables to the response of interest.