Autothermal gasification of lignin-rich residues was carried out to evaluate the performances of a pilot plant with a feeding rate of 20−30 kg h −1 of feedstock. The facility was based on an updraft gasifier and a gas cleaning train composed of a biodiesel scrubber and coalescence filters. The tests were performed with solid residues of ethanol production starting from straws or canes. Air at a low equivalence ratio was used as gasification medium. The autothermal processing and the lignin-rich feedstock made it possible to highlight a sequence of exothermic and endothermic reactions by measuring the heating rates along the reactive bed. The CO 2 production was proportional to the ash content. The average production of raw syngas was 1.94 kg per kg of dry residue, of which H 2 and CO were 27.2 and 696 g, respectively. The efficiency of energy conversion from solid to cold gas was 64% and reached about 81% including the contribution of the condensable organic fraction.
In this work, the efficiency of the
updraft gasification of different
biomass was analyzed using a 20 kg/h pilot facility. Eucalyptus wood
chips, torrefied Eucalyptus wood chips, and torrefied Spruce chips
were investigated. Absolute air, mixes of air with steam, and mixes
of pure oxygen with steam were used as gasification media. The direct
comparison between the parental and torrefied biomass emphasizes the
positive effect of this pretreatment on syngas properties and plant
performances. Typically, the use of torrefied feedstock resulted in
a reduction to about 1/5 of the tar load in
the syngas and in 44% increment of the thermal power of the plant
when compared to the performances obtained with the parental wood.
The introduction of steam as co-gasifying stream was effective to
avoid hot spots inside the reactive bed and to stabilize the process.
Moreover, the use of steam positively affected the molar ratio of
H2/CO that reached the value of 1.17 with the H2 concentration in the syngas of 39 vol %. The cold gas efficiency
was 0.85 with torrefied biomass and pure oxygen with steam (0.82 when
taking into account the energy for steam production), whereas the
use of parental wood in similar conditions gave a value of 0.67 (net
of 0.65). The treatment capacity of the plant was directly proportional
to the reactivity of the feedstock as assessed by thermogravimetric
analysis when the feed was reported as volumetric flow.
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