Abstract
A deoiled rapeseed press cake (RPC) was pyrolyzed by heating at a slow heating rate to 1000 °C in a fixed bed reactor, and the produced char was then gasified to obtain data for the kinetic modeling of the process. The gasification experiments were performed in a thermogravimetric analyzer (TGA) under steam/argon mixtures at different temperatures (750, 800 and 850 °C) and steam mole fractions (0.17 and 0.45). The three most commonly used gas-solid kinetic models, the random pore model, the volumetric model and the shrinking core model were used to describe the conversion of char during steam gasification. The objective of the kinetic study was to determine the kinetic parameters and to assess the ability of the models to predict the RPC conversion during steam gasification. A TGA-MS analysis was applied to assess the composition of the product gas. The main steam gasification product of the RPC was hydrogen (approximately 60 mol % of the total product). The volumetric model was able to accurately predict the behavior of the RPC char gasification with steam at temperatures of 750–850 °C and steam concentrations less than 0.45 mole fraction. The activation energy and the reaction order with respect to steam were equal to 166 kJ/mol and 0.5, respectively, and were typical values for the gasification of biomass chars with steam
Highlights
Biofuels derived from the chemical processing of plant biomass, have emerged as one of the most viable alternatives to petroleum fuels
These experiments were performed to establish the temperatures at temperature during steam gasification of the rapeseed press cake (RPC) obtained in two tests carried out under the same which the are reaction at a1.reasonable rate
Steam gasification of pyrolysis RPC char was studied in a thermo-balance coupled with mass spectrometer (TGA-massof spectrometry (MS)) at atmospheric pressure to determine the composition of the gas
Summary
Biofuels derived from the chemical processing of plant biomass, have emerged as one of the most viable alternatives to petroleum fuels. In Europe, rapeseed oil is the most popular and inexpensive material to produce biofuels. Biodiesel from vegetable oil is a natural fuel composed mainly of methyl esters of long-chain fatty acids obtained by the transesterification reaction of triglycerides contained in the oil with alcohols in the presence of a hydroxide catalyst (KOH, NaOH, etc.) [1,2]. In biodiesel production processes, anhydrous methanol is used, mainly due to its cost and its physical and chemical advantages [3]. For the basic-catalyzed process of transesterification, a significant amount of alcohol is used. The optimal molar ratio of methanol to oil is 6/1 [1]
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