Abstract
Thermodynamic equilibrium analysis for conversion of palm empty fruit bunch (PEFB) bio-oil to methane using low-temperature steam reforming (LTSR) process was conducted by assuming either isothermal or adiabatic condition, with and without sorption enhancement (SE-LTSR), with CaO (S) or Ca(OH) 2(S) as CO 2 sorbent. Temperatures of 300-800 K, molar steam to carbon (S/C) ratios of 0.3-7.0, pressures of 1-30 atm and molar calcium to carbon ratios (Ca:C) of 0.3-1.0 were simulated. For reasons of process simplicity, the best conditions for CH 4 production were observed for the adiabatic LTSR process without sorption at S/C between 2.5 and 3 (compared to the stoichiometric S/C of 0.375), inlet temperature above 450 K, resulting in reformer temperature of 582 K, where close to the theoretical maximum CH 4 yield of 38 wt % of the simulated dry PEFB oil was obtained, resulting in a reformate consisting of 44.5 vol % CH 4 , 42.7 vol % CO 2 and 12.7 vol % H 2 and requiring only moderate heating mainly to partially preheat the reactants. Temperatures and S/C below these resulted in high risk of carbon by-product.
Highlights
Bio-oil production via fast pyrolysis is one of the most attractive processes for converting solid biomass into renewable chemicals and higher value fuels [1,2] due to its feedstock flexibility
The Chemical Equilibrium and Application (CEA) programme predicted CH4 production using the same value of total feed of 3000 moles of carbon for all the conditions tested and in the temperature range of 300–800 K at 1 atm
These were tested for a range of temperatures and steam to carbon ratio (S/C) in equilibrium low-temperature steam reforming (LTSR) at atmospheric pressure to assess the sensitivity of CH4 yield to the model mixture make up (Figure 2)
Summary
Bio-oil production via fast pyrolysis is one of the most attractive processes for converting solid biomass into renewable chemicals and higher value fuels [1,2] due to its feedstock flexibility. This process converts biomass into bio-oil (60–75 wt %), solid char (15–25 wt %) and gases (10–20 wt %), depending on its feedstock and process parameters [3] by thermal decomposition of biomass in the absence of oxygen in the range of 350–550 °C [4,5] and reaction time of 0.5–5.0 s [3,4,5]. For Malaysia, the conversion of bio-oil to CH4 is a practical approach to meet the current energy demand in the country as CH4 has a similar composition as natural gas
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