Thermal kinetics and syngas production on co-gasification of deoiled jatropha seed cake residues with wood chips

Abstract

The total energy demand has been escalating day to day globally as well as the quest for sustainable and affordable energy enforcing the paradigm shifts of predominant fossil fuels. The prospective bioavailability of biomass residues in India could induct the gasification and co-gasification technologies through the interaction of various sources either by adopting biochemical or thermochemical methods. Both gasification and co-gasification studies experimented with deoiled jatropha seed cake (JC) residues and wood chips (WC) along with their blends at the mass ratio of 75:25, 50:50 and 25:75 in the lab scale down draft type biomass gasifier. Thermogravimetric analysis at the heating rate of 30 o C per min in the nitrogen atmosphere was carried out to investigate the thermal decomposition behavior along with pyrolytic kinetics. The produced syngas was analyzed for its chemical composition (CO, H 2 , CH 4 , CO 2 , and O 2 ) by a portable gas analyzer. The co-gasification of 75JC:25WC exhibited the higher calorific value than the gasification of JC and WC individually at the respective pyrolytic regimes. It acts as evidence for substantial synergetic effects and thermal interaction for blending JC with WC during co-gasification for syngas production. The JC residues with low activation energy could be cogasified with WC to overcome the demand for fuel sources with higher activation energies.