Analytical and numerical modelling of biomass gasification in downdraft gasifiers

Abstract

The ever-growing energy demand and environmental pollution level have pushed research interest toward the development of new promising technologies to utilize bioenergy sustainably. In this scenario, biomass gasification has been regarded as a promising renewable energy resource that, if efficiently exploited, can contribute to the reduction of dependency on fossil fuel and CO2 emissions from the power sector. Nevertheless, exploitation of biomass gasification still requires to overcome technological and logistical issues. In this work, the authors propose a general thermodynamic model able to predict the steady operating conditions of biomass gasification. Assuming thermodynamic equilibrium, the model is able to predict temperature, mass flow rate and composition of produced syngas. Moreover, a numerical model of the biomass gasification system has been developed by using the commercial software Aspen Plus. It is a steady-state zero-dimensional equilibrium model, based on the mass and energy balances, assuming the Gibbs free energy minimization. Aspen Plus allows building models of customized operative units using the Fortran code. In order to assure the performance of both analytical and Aspen Plus models, numerical results are compared with experimental data available in the scientific literature for downdraft gasifiers.

High Dimensional Model Representation Approach for Prediction and Optimization of the Supercritical Water Gasification System Coupled with Photothermal Energy Storage

“…According to the gas production mechanism, biomass gasification technology can be divided into pyrolysis gasification (without using a gasification medium) and reactive gasification (using a gasification medium). Reactive gasification includes air gasification, water vapor gasification [9,10], etc. In addition, wet routes of hydrogen production from biomass have been widely considered [11,12].…”

Simplified model of process to design the two stages gasification system for reuse of municipal waste

“…The basic idea in gasification is to create syngas from waste that is a source for chemicals in chemical industry [3]. There are different approaches to use different material [4,5,6,7,8] or plasma [9,10,11]. There are many possibilities how to make a gasification and the main problem is how to remove difficulties with tars in the process and how to use them as advantage compared to other processes.…”