Improving the Synthesis Gas Quality in Catalytic Gasification of Rice Straw by an Integrated Hot-Gas Cleaning System

Abstract

This research investigates an enhanced removal rate of tar and trace pollutants (e.g. hydrogen chloride and hydrogen sulfide, H2S) in the gasification of rice straw, using an integrated in situ tar reduction and hot-gas cleaning technique. The gasification temperature was set at 900°C and equilibrium ratio (ER) was 0.30 in the gasifier. In the in situ tar reduction method, the catalyst, dolomite with an amended ratio of 0–15% was introduced to the gasifier. The integrated hot-gas cleaning system applied a multi-packed tower to remove the tar, sulfur and/or chlorine byproduct in syngas at 250°C. The packed materials composed of zeolite, calcined dolomite and activated carbon. The experimental results indicated that the tar concentration of syngas was approximately 20 g/kg. However, in catalytic gasification with 5% dolomite addition, the tar concentration reduced to 17 g/kg. The tar reduction efficiency was approximately 15% by an in situ dolomite addition. When applying the integrated hot-gas cleanup system, the tar was virtually eliminated. The total tar elimination rate was almost 100% and the cleaned syngas could be applied in other energy utilization equipment. On the other hand, the H2S and HCl concentration were 101 ppmv and 991 ppmv, respectively. After the integrated syngas cleaning system, the H2S and HCl were decreased to 7.9 ppmv and 410 ppmv with a removal efficiency of 92.1% and 58.6%, respectively. It can be concluded that combining the in situ method with the integrated syngas cleaning system can effectively reduce the amount of byproduct and enhance the syngas quality in the gasification of rice straw.