Gasification and power generation characteristics of woody biomass utilizing a downdraft gasifier

Preliminary fixed-bed downdraft gasification of birch woodchips

“…Additionally, birch has low ash, low sulfur, low chlorine and high calorific value and high volatile matter content as reflected in Table 3. Woody biomass exhibiting such composition possibly yields less or no tar in the produced gas within the operating scale that does not exceed 30 kW as evidenced by (Son et al 2011;Warren et al 1995). Moreover, low ash offers substantial advantages in reducing the potential of slagging and slow biomass conversion, as discussed by (Rajvanshi 1986).…”

“…Fixed-bed reactors are further categorized into updraft, downdraft and cross-draft gasifiers based on the way feedstock and gas move through the system. Within the fixed-bed reactors, downdraft technologies offer several advantages that include: simplicity in construction (Wei 2010), suitability for small scale applications (Asadullah 2014) and the possibilities of generating less tar (McKendry 2002;Son et al 2011;Chopra and Jain 2007) as a result of hot gas passing through the high-temperature zone of the reactor. Based on these premises, the present work investigated air gasification of fixed-bed downdraft gasifier utilizing wood as feedstock.…”

Experimental investigation on multi-stage downdraft gasification: Influence of air ratio and equivalent ratio to the gasifier performance

“…Gasification applications in internal combustion engines require syngas with tar amounts about 10-50 mg / Nm 3 [7]. Meanwhile, tar produced in the conventional downdraft gasifiers about 2 g/Nm 3 and conventional updraft gasifier is about 58 g/Nm 3 . If the applied system of cleaning supplies gas with high efficiency, then the content of tar will be reduced to approximately 20-40 mg/Nm 3 and the content of tar will be less than the specified level, but required higher costs and requires the installation of a wide system [8].…”

“…Biomass gasification for power generation faces many difficulties when entering commercialization scale [1] due to various problems, especially from the beginning of the fuel handling [2], biomass conversion technique to gas [3,4] methods of gas cleaning (dry gas), gas cooling and methods of utilization of gas into electrical energy [5,6]. Gasification applications in internal combustion engines require syngas with tar amounts about 10-50 mg / Nm 3 [7].…”

Kinetics examination of pressurised steam gasification of beech wood

“…Research are carried out on the use of various types of biomass in the reactors of diverse construction, among others: pine chips in a fluidized bed [10] and fixed bed reactors [11]; bark of pine, Japanese oak [12] and pomace from olive oil production [13] in a fixed bed; oak, maritime pine and eucalyptus [14] as well as wood [15] and wood pellets [16], digestate from the production of ethanol [17], almond shell [18] in the fluidized bed reactors; waste from the processing of sugar cane in the cyclone reactor [19,20]; husks of sunflower, rapeseed, pine cones, cotton waste and pomace oil in thermogravimetric analyzer [21]; animal waste compost in a two-stage fluidized bed reactor [22]. During research influence of temperature, particle size, amount of steam and air fed to the reactor, as well as the type of biomass and catalysts used on the amount and the calorific value of the resulting gas are analyzed.…”