The ever-increasing price of fossil fuels and the rising environmental concern have encouraged the use of biomass as energy sources. Gasification is a simple and highly efficient method for converting biomass energy into fuel. In the present work, gasification of some locally available woody and non-woody biomass in Assam has been done. Proximate analysis is used to give the composition of the biomass in terms of gross components such as moisture, volatile matter, ash and fixed carbon. Thermo-chemical equilibrium modelling is performed and the variation of gas composition, namely, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane and nitrogen, with moisture content (0–20%) is studied for all the samples of biomass at a temperature of 850°C. It is found that nitrogen has the highest content at0% weight basis and methane has the lowest for the same composition. It is found that the composition of hydrogen and carbon dioxide in the fuel gas increases continuously with the moisture content. On the other hand, the percentage of carbon monoxide reduces for the same variation of moisture content. The composition of methane and the inert nitrogen is almost constant with moisture content. The results obtained are also compared with the existing commercially available biomass sources.
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