Numerical study of the effect of oxidation zone inlet air temperature variation on municipal solid waste pellet gasification process on downdraft type reactor characteristics

Abstract

Gasification is an efficient technology to extract energy from MSW biomass into energy in the form of syngas. One of the most influential paramerers to improve syngas quality is temperature, so the development of the design and operation of the downdraft type reactor is done by heating the inlet air of the oxidation zone through an external heater. Research with numerical studies was carried out on the effect of the inlet air in the oxidation zone to determine the temperature distribution and syngas composition along the reactor. Based on experimental research, heating the inlet air of the oxidation zone with external heaters in this study was carried out with 5 temperature variations, namely 80 °C, 110 °C, 150 °C, 180 °C, and 200 °C. The modeling used is the standard model k-epsilon, Radiation P1, the transport species model with turbulence used is finite-rate / eddy-dissipation, and Discrete Phase Model (DPM). The results obtained from this study were that the highest air temperature was obtained at 200°C at 1004 °C in the oxidation zone. The composition of syngas CO, H2, and CH4 at temperature increases of 80-200 °C increased from 21.64%, 9.24%, and 2.86% to 22.65%, 10.49%, and 3.10%. Then increasing the LHV syngas from 4,757.20 kJ/m3 to 5,106.02 kJ/m3. Cold gas efficiency increased from 72.17% to 79.31%.