Syngas for biorefineries from thermochemical gasification of lignocellulosic fuels and residues—5 years’ experience with an advanced dual fluidized bed gasifier design

Abstract

In many processes proposed for biorefineries, recycling procedures, and industrial or agricultural production processes, residue is generated which could be further transformed by thermochemical conversion via gasification. The technology of dual fluidized bed steam gasification is capable of producing a valuable product gas out of such residue. The generated nitrogen-free product gas can be used for heat and power production and is suitable for separating gases (e.g. hydrogen). However, if the product gas is cleaned, its use as syngas is more beneficial for manufacturing renewable chemical substances, like synthetic natural gas, methanol, Fischer-Tropsch liquids, or mixed alcohols. This paper presents the results of experimental research from gasification test runs of different biogenic fuels, carried out with an advanced 100 kW pilot plant over the last 5 years at TU Wien. The focus is to provide an overview of measured results validated by mass and energy balances and to present key calculated performance indicating key figures of the test runs. In this way, the influence of various operational parameters and the composition of the product gas are evaluated. The presented results form the basis for the proper design of suitable gas-cleaning equipment. Subsequently, the clean syngas is available for several synthesis applications in future biorefineries.

Parametric Study on the Adjustability of the Syngas Composition by Sorption-Enhanced Gasification in a Dual-Fluidized Bed Pilot Plant

“…Gravimetric and GC-FID tar concentrations (on db, at standard temperatu pressure (STP)) are plotted in Figure 11 for gasification temperatures between 654 °C. The trends indicate a significant influence of the gasification temperature on concentration with enhanced tar reforming for increasing gasification temperatur also reported in [19,29,34,35]. By increasing the gasification temperature from 654the gravimetric tar content is reduced significantly from 23-1 g/m³ (db, STP) w GC-FID tars decrease from 18-4 g/m³ (db, STP).…”

Impact of residual fuel ash layers on the catalytic activation of K-feldspar regarding the water–gas shift reaction

“…Furthermore, the utilization of residual biomass of lower quality than stem-wood-based biomass is of high interest for improving the economic feasibility of the process as well as increasing the share of renewables in the energy mix. Previous studies have been focused on the use of, e.g., chicken manure, bark, straw, sugar cane bagasse, or exhausted olive pomace as residual biomass [21][22][23]. Different residual biomasses cannot be compared easily since their composition and fuel characteristics vary greatly.…”

Thermodynamic investigation of SNG production based on dual fluidized bed gasification of biogenic residues

“…All displayed feed gas compositions are obtained with a new generation 100 kW th DFB gasifier at TU Wien. The DFB process is not elaborated in this study and further information can be found in literature [4,7,8,56,60,61]. The lower part of Table 1 depicts the gas compositions which are derived from the DFB gasification process and are in further consequence used as the feed gas compositions for the methanation process.…”

“…Ethylene was found to be the main hydrocarbon in the gasifier product gas besides CH 4 which is not removed by conventional gas cleaning steps like scrubbers or activated carbon filters. Besides ethylene, also hydrocarbons like benzene, toluene, xylene, or naphthalene are often not completely removed [55][56][57]. In this investigation, they are neglected because the concentrations are comparably low.…”