Gasification of biomass and municipal solid waste is a technology that has been proposed as a dualpurpose solution for mitigating environmental impacts as well as for producing syngas, a very useful intermediary product for energy valorization and organic synthesis. However the presence of pollutants, notably tar, hamper this raw syngas (producer syngas) to be used in high-efficient energy applications such as jet engines, fuel cells or in Fischer-Tropsch synthesis, limiting its economic value. For reducing tar a lot of scientific and technical effort has been devoted. In this paper, the state-of-the-art of plasma tar removal from syngas is done, focusing on the use of plasma in tandem with existing technologies, underlining its advantages and the remaining challenges. The most promising ways to get a syngas with very low tar levels using plasma seem to be: (i) tandem tar cleaning techniques (e.g. secondary plasma enhanced catalytic unit) and (ii) secondary thermal plasma cracking units.
Keywords tar cracking • plasma • syngas cleaning 1 IntroductionThe conversion of carbon-rich raw materials such as biomass and Municipal Solid Waste(MSW) into syngas has been proposed as the perfect solution for decreasing the amount of waste and byproducts discarded while obtaining a syngas that can be used for organic