In this article, supercritical water gasification of biocrude at different conditions was performed and compared to each other. Three scenarios were considered while treating biocrude originating from cattle manure (CM) and corn husk (CH), namely, uncatalyzed feedstock, catalyzed with 10% Ni–0.08% Ru/Al2O3 and finally catalyzed with 10% Ni–0.08% Ru/Al2O3–ZrO2. It was found that 10% Ni–0.08% Ru/Al2O3–ZrO2 has performed significantly better than the other two scenarios over the 5 hour run time with a 193 and 187% higher hydrogen yield compared to the uncatalyzed and 10% Ni–0.08% Ru/Al2O3 catalyzed scenarios, respectively. Compared to CM gasification in the presence of a 10% Ni–0.08% Ru/Al2O3–ZrO2 catalyst, the catalyst got deactivated because of the high phenol and furan content in the corn husk biocrude, therefore hydrogen yield performance fell significantly. It was observed that the carbon gasification efficiency of the biocrude was independent of temperature. In terms of carbon conversion, the equilibrium conditions for the biocrude considered were attained at lower temperature. A mechanistic model based on the Eley–Rideal method was devised and tested against the obtained data. The dissociation of adsorbed oxygenated hydrocarbon is found to be the rate-determining step with an average absolute deviation of 3.55%.

The purification of biomass-derived fuels has been studied extensively in the last 10 years. In 2010, cryogenic packed beds (CPBs) were developed and have shown promise in the removal of CO 2 , H 2 O, and H 2 S from flue gas and biogas. Because of the novelty of the technology, CPB purification of syngas had not yet been tested. This research tests the ability of a CPB to purify syngas by adapting a previously developed one-dimensional model. Syngas was benchmarked against biogas, which had been previously determined to be energetically feasible in a CPB. The biomass-derived BCL/FERCO and coal-derived Shell syngases showed better performance in the simulation than biogas. The BCL/FERCO and Shell gases had heating value/energy cost ratios that were 37 and 14% greater than biogas, respectively. Both syngases had longer system saturation times than biogas, thus a reduction in time spent performing system recovery cycles. While these syngases performed well for this analysis, they were not deemed to be ideal for gas-to-liquid (GTL) processing because of their hydrogen/carbon monoxide ratio. Because of the importance of GTL compatibility, the Purox and Foster Wheeler syngases were further analyzed. While the Purox and Foster Wheeler syngases were shown to be less energetically feasible than the biogas (82 and 62% of biogas, respectively), they were both deemed ideal for GTL processing. They would also require fewer recovery cycles than biogas because of their longer saturation times. An absolute energy analysis should be performed in future works to determine if the purification of the GTLcompatible Purox and Foster Wheeler gases is energetically feasible in a CPB.