Design and validation of reactant feeding control strategies for the solar-autothermal hybrid gasification of woody biomass

Dynamic simulation of a solar-autothermal hybridized gasifier: Model principle, experimental validation and parametric study

“…The H 2 :CO molar ratio was maintained near its initial value thanks to the injection of steam, according to both the simulation data (slightly increasing from 1.10 to 1.13) and the experimental data (slightly decreasing from 1.32 to 1.19). Actually, it would have decreased drastically if no steam had been supplied [29]. The coupled impact of oxygen and steam injection rates was thus well represented by the DEMOSTRAR model, despite an over-estimation of H 2 and CO flow rates due to mainly the thermodynamic equilibrium hypothesis and to the imprecise wood injection rates over long experiments [29].…”

“…A validation of the model was performed with beech wood pyro-gasification experimental results, in the case of hybridization with in-situ oxygen injection [29]. The aim was to control the syngas quality (H 2 :CO ratio) during hybridization by conjointly increasing the steam injection rate.…”

“…Regarding the gas phase reactions, an average residence time can be proposed by considering the total gas output flow rate. The solar gasification of 1.2 g/min of beech wood yields a syngas flow-rate (mostly H 2 and CO) around 1.6 NL/min [29], added to the 2.7 NL/min of argon injected. Under steady state, and considering that the gas temperature is 1100 °C [26], the mean gas residence time therefore lies around 0.7 seconds.…”

“…Besides, the in-situ injection of oxygen enables to heat the reactor chamber [25][26][27][28], despite an altered syngas quality. During such autothermal hybridization, steam and wood injection rates can be tuned to control the syngas quantity and quality [29]. However, the assessment of more sophisticated hybridization strategies (simultaneous control of the three reactants injection rates) cannot be carried out without an efficient dynamic simulation tool.…”

Concentrating solar assisted biomass-to-fuel conversion through gasification: A review

“…Since the WGS reaction is exothermic, from the point of view of the reaction equilibrium, the reaction favors lower temperature. (Curcio et al, 2022) suggested it would be better to maintain a constant total syngas throughput and leave the control of H 2 :CO ratio to a downflow shift unit. Instead of water gas shift, (Rahbari et al, 2021), employed PVelectrolysis based supplemental H 2 to adjust H 2 :CO ratio.…”