This paper is a review of the state of the art of biomass gasification and the future of using biomass in Serbia and it presents researches within the project “The Development of a CHP Plant with Biomass Gasification”. The concept of downdraft demonstration unit coupled with gas engine is adopted. Downdraft fixed-bed gasification is generally favored for CHP, owing to the simple and reliable gasifiers and low content of tar and dust in produced gas. The composition and quantity of gas and the amount of air are defined by modeling biomass residues gasification process. The gas (290-400m3/h for 0.5- 0.7MW biomass input) obtained by gasification at 800oC with air at atmospheric pressure contains 14% H2, 27% CO, 9% CO2, 2% CH4, and 48% N2, and its net heating value is 4.8-6 MJ/Nm3. The expected gasifier efficiency is up to 80%. The review of the work on biomass gasification has shown that the development of technology has reached the mature stage. There are CHP plants with biomass gasification operating as demonstration plants and several gasification demonstration units are successfully oriented to biofuel production. No attempt has been made here to address the economic feasibility of the system. Economics will be the part of a later work as firmer data are acquired

The paper presents results of theoretical numerical research dealing with CO and NOX emission performed in the process of optimization of the performance of low-power atmospheric burners. The theoretical part of this paper, whose main goals were better understanding of the complex issues of methodology and establishment of performance prediction and optimization of low-power atmospheric gas burner included numerical variation of independent parameters, such as burner geometry, the coefficients of primary and secondary air and different gaseous fuels including biogas. The findings of theoretically obtained performance prediction and optimization of atmospheric burners were experimentally investigated in purpose built test rigs for a number of variable parameters. The obtained results fully justified the proposed models of performance prediction and burner optimization.

Utilization of hydrocarbon gaseous fuels, such as biogas, landfill gas and others, is a valuable contribution to sustainable energy production and climate changing control. The presence of CO in these gases decreases heat of combustion, flame temperature, 2 flame speed and can induce flame blow-off and combustion instabilities. In order to better understand the problem, flame geometry and location was investigated using * chemiluminescence (CH) imaging technique. Combustion took place in a purposely built, lean, premixed, unconfined swirl burner, fueled by methane and propane diluted with CO. The fuel type, air-to-fuel equivalence ratio and CO content were chosen as the 2 2 * independent variables. The CH imaging by means of a commercial CCD camera, fitted with an optical filter, was used for flame investigation. The analysis of images showed * that the CH emission intensity, flame geometry and location were remarkably affected by the fuel type and the air-to-fuel equivalence ratio, while the CO dilution was of minor 2 importance.