Bubbling fluidized bed gasifiers (BFG) has potential for rural electrification projects especially in third world countries where biomass supplies are abundant from agricultural, wood industries and where electricity supply from the grid is not available. In this paper the performance of a BFG was observed in terms of its thermal output. Gas chromatography (GC) was used to check the gas composition. The size of the wood chips was irregular but mostly falls in the range of 30 mm in both length and width, with the thickness at an average of 3.0 mm. It showed that the gas produced had an energy content of 4.74 MJ/m 3 at a bed temperature of 733 1C, with the equivalence ratio at 0.23. The resulting thermal efficiency was 61.32% with a thermal output of 355.55 kW th . For village electrification projects, this thermal output is able to supply 100 kW e through a diesel generator, enough for electricity consumption in 100 households. An energy balance of the system was done to determine its work potential. It was found that the heat loss was 29.64%. A Shankey diagram of the energy distribution of the BFG system shows that the rest of the thermal output is not utilized and exits the system in the form of char and tarry liquids. Condensates were collected for high-performance liquid chromatograph (HPLC) analysis. It was found that phenol was high when the bed temperature was 450 1C, which makes the outlet condensate very soluble in water and can cause water contamination. r
A non-thermal plasma reactor was used to investigate its effectiveness in reducing the by-products from biomass gasification. Biomass is used for generating heat and power through gasification, which is a process of converting solid fuel to gaseous fuel at temperatures of 700 to 900 °C by operating a reactor in sub-stoichiometric conditions. This gas mixture can be utilized for liquid fuel synthesis or for fuel cells. However, the by-product of gasification consists of tar, which consists of oxygenates, ringed-aromatics, phenolic compounds, and polyaromatic hydrocarbons (PAH). Depending on the composition, the condensation temperature can be as high as 450 °C, fouling downstream equipment. In this study, a dielectric barrier discharge (DBD) reactor with a coil as the inner electrode was used to reduce toluene, a model tar compound. Toluene was injected into a mixing chamber that was heated to 900 °C, evaporating the toluene, and is entrained by nitrogen into the DBD reactor. High voltage is injected into the DBD reactor to initiate ionization, decomposing the toluene into lighter hydrocarbons. A sampling bottle submerged in an ice bath collects the residual toluene, and the resulting decomposition rate is as high as 70%.
Despite the rapid growth in the uptake of renewable energy technologies, the educational profile and the skills gained at University level do not always comply with the practical needs of the organisations working in the field. Furthermore, even though the residential sector has very high potential in curbing its CO2 emissions worldwide thus meeting the challenging goals set out by the international agreements, such reduction has been limited so far. Within this context, the ‘Skybelt’ project, co-funded by the EU under the framework of the Erasmus + programme aims at enhancing in several Universities of Asia and Europe the engineering skills of students of all level for application of sustainable renewable energy solutions in the built environment. With the target of increasing the employability of graduates and the impact of the project, a survey on the labour market needs for specialists with enhanced knowledge and skills in the topic of the project has been conducted in the related Asian countries. Hence, relevant industries, labour market organisations and other stakeholders have been interviewed and the main results of this analysis is reported in the present paper. As first outcome of this activity, the obtained results have been considered in the selection of the modules to be improved according to a student centred study approach.
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