Energy and exergy analysis and optimization of biomass gasification process for hydrogen production (based on air,steam and air/steam gasifying agents)

Growing the consumption of fossil fuels and emerging global warming issue have driven the research interests toward renewable and environmentally friendly energy sources. Biomass gasification is identified as an efficient technology to produce sustainable hydrogen. In this work, energy and exergy analysis coupled with thermodynamic equilibrium model were implemented in biomass gasification process for production of hydrogen. In this regard, a detailed comparison of the performance of a downdraft gasifier was implemented using air, steam, and air/steam as the gasifying agents for horse manure, pinewood and sawdust as the biomass materials. The comparison results indicate that the steam gasification of pinewood generates a more desired product gas compositions with a much higher hydrogen exergy efficiency and low exergy values of unreacted carbon and irreversibility. Then the effects of the inherent operating factors were investigated and optimized applying a response surface methodology to maximize hydrogen exergy efficiency of the process. A hydrogen exergy efficiency of 44% was obtained when the product gas exergy efficiency reaches to the highest value (88.26%) and destruction and unreacted carbon efficiencies exhibit minimum values of 7.96% and 1.9%.     

Energy and exergy analysis of biomass gasification at different temperatures

Biomass is usually gasified above the optimal temperature at the carbon-boundary point, due to the use of different types of gasifiers, gasifying media, clinkering/slagging of bed material, tar cracking, etc. This paper is focused on air gasification of biomass with different moisture at different gasification temperatures. A chemical equilibrium model is developed and analyses are carried out at pressures of 1 and 10 bar with the typical biomass feed represented by CH_1.4O_0.59N_0.0017. At the temperature range 900–1373 K, the increase of moisture in biomass leads to the decrease of efficiencies for the examined processes. The moisture content of biomass may be designated as “optimal” only if the gasification temperature is equal to the carbon-boundary temperature for biomass with that specific moisture content. Compared with the efficiencies based on chemical energy and exergy, biomass feedstock drying with the product gas sensible heat is less beneficial for the efficiency based on total exergy. The gasification process at a given gasification temperature can be improved by the use of dry biomass and by the carbon-boundary temperature approaching the required temperature with the change of gasification pressure or with the addition of heat in the process.     

Comparison of thermochemical conversion processes of biomass to hydrogen-rich gas mixtures

Hydrogen can be produced from biomass materials via thermochemical conversion processes such as pyrolysis, gasification, steam gasification, steam-reforming, and supercritical water gasification (SCWG) of biomass. In general, the total hydrogen-rich gaseous products increased with increasing pyrolysis temperature for the biomass sample. The aim of gasification is to obtain a synthesis gas (bio-syngas) including mainly H₂ and CO. Steam reforming is a method of producing hydrogen-rich gas from biomass. Hydrothermal gasification in supercritical water medium has become a promising technique to produce hydrogen from biomass with high efficiency. Hydrogen production by biomass gasification in the supercritical water (SCW) is a promising technology for utilizing wet biomass. The effect of initial moisture content of biomass on the yields of hydrogen is good.     

Experimental study on biomass gasification in a double air stage downdraft reactor

This work presents an experimental study of the gasification of a wood biomass in a moving bed downdraft reactor with two-air supply stages. This configuration is considered as primary method to improve the quality of the producer gas, regarding its tar reduction. By varying the air flow fed to the gasifier and the distribution of gasification air between stages (AR), being the controllable and measurable variables for this type of gasifiers, measuring the CO, CH₄ and H₂ gas concentrations and through a mass and energy balance, the gas yield and its power, the cold efficiency of the process and the equivalence ratio (ER), as well as other performance variables were calculated. The gasifier produces a combustible gas with a CO, CH₄ and H₂ concentrations of 19.04, 0.89 and 16.78% v respectively, at a total flow of air of 20 Nm³ h⁻¹ and an AR of 80%. For these conditions, the low heating value of the gas was 4539 kJ Nm⁻³. Results from the calculation model show a useful gas power and cold efficiency around 40 kW and 68%, respectively. The resulting ER under the referred operation condition is around 0.40. The results suggested a considerable effect of the secondary stage over the reduction of the CH₄ concentration which is associated with the decreases of the tar content in the produced gas. Under these conditions the biomass devolatilization in the pyrolysis zone gives much lighter compounds which are more easily cracked when the gas stream passes through the combustion zone.     

Biomass-based hydrogen for oil refining: Integration and performances of two gasification concepts

In this work, two biomass-to-hydrogen concepts are designed and their integration with a large European refinery is investigated. One concept is based on indirect, atmospheric steam gasification while the second is based on pressurized direct oxygen-steam-blown gasification. The technologies chosen for gas cleaning, upgrading and hydrogen separation also differ in the two concepts. Heat integration and poly-generation opportunities are identified by means of process integration tools and four system configurations are identified. These are compared in terms of energy and exergy performances and potential for reduction of fossil CO₂ emissions at the refinery. It is found that the performance of the biomass-to-hydrogen concepts can be improved by up to 11% points in energy efficiency and 9% points in exergy efficiency. The design based on indirect gasification appears the most efficient according to both energy and exergy efficiencies. All configurations yield potential significant reductions of fossil CO₂ emissions at the refinery.     

Study on biomass gasification under various operating conditions

An Aspen Plus model of biomass gasification with different gasifying agents has been developed. Due to lack of kinetic data, the developed model is based on Gibbs free energy minimization. The main objective of this study is to study the influence of gasifying agent (pure oxygen; oxygen-enriched air and air), gasification temperature and equivalence ratio (ER) on gas composition, gas lower heating value (LHV), and energy/exergy efficiencies. The developed model was validated with experimental data which was found to be in well agreement. Increase in gasification temperature led to a significant increase in H₂ content. On the other hand, an increase in ER led to a significant reduction in H₂, CO, and CH₄ and a significant increase in CO₂. Also, a gradual downward trend of exergy efficiency (EE) was found, as ER increased from 0.15 to 0.21, while it basically kept constant as the gasification temperature was varied.     

Process simulation and optimization of groundnut shell biomass air gasification for hydrogen-enriched syngas production

In this study, a detailed steady-state equilibrium simulation model was designed using ASPEN Plus software to analyze and assess the efficiency of the groundnut shell biomass air gasification process. The developed model includes three general stages: biomass drying, pyrolysis, and gasification. The predicted results are quite similar to those found in the literature, which is consistent with simulation results being validated against experimental data. The effect of different operating parameters, like the gasification temperature, gasification pressure, and the equivalence ratio (ER), on the syngas composition and H₂/CO ratio is investigated using sensitivity analysis. The findings of the sensitivity analysis revealed that raising the temperature preferred H₂ and CO production, whereas increasing the pressure has favored CO₂ and CH₄ production. Increasing the ER value also boosted CO and CO₂ yield. Moreover, in an effort to optimize the amount of H₂ generated within the process, the sensitivity analysis was used to evaluate the simultaneous effect of operational parameters on the molar fraction of H₂. To maximize H₂ as a desired product, the following operating parameters were achieved: gasification temperature of 894 °C, gasification pressure of 1 bar, and ER of 0.05, resulting in an H₂ molar fraction of 0.64.     

Biomass thermochemical conversion: A review on tar elimination from biomass catalytic gasification

Biomass is promising renewable energy because of the possibility of value-added fuels production from biomass thermochemical conversion. Among the thermochemical conversion technology, gasification could produce the H₂-rich syngas then into value-added chemicals via F-T (Fischer-Tropsch) synthesis. However, a variety of difficulties, such as tar formation, reactors impediment, complex tar cracked mechanism, etc. make it difficult to develop for further application. This paper sheds light on the developments of biomass thermochemical conversion, tar classifications, tar formation, and elimination methods. Secondly, we provide a comprehensive the state-of-the-art technologies for tar elimination, and we introduce some advanced high activity catalysts. Furthermore, many represent tar models were employed for explanation of the tar-cracked pathway, and real tar-cracked mechanism was proposed. Following this, some operational conditions and effective gasified models were concluded to give an instruction for biomass catalytic gasification.     

Hydrogen-rich gas production from biomass air and oxygen/steam gasification in a downdraft gasifier

Biomass gasification is an important method to obtain renewable hydrogen. However, this technology still stagnates in a laboratory scale because of its high-energy consumption. In order to get maximum hydrogen yield and decrease energy consumption, this study applies a self-heated downdraft gasifier as the reactor and uses char as the catalyst to study the characteristics of hydrogen production from biomass gasification. Air and oxygen/steam are utilized as the gasifying agents. The experimental results indicate that compared to biomass air gasification, biomass oxygen/steam gasification improves hydrogen yield depending on the volume of downdraft gasifier, and also nearly doubles the heating value of fuel gas. The maximum lower heating value of fuel gas reaches 11.11 MJ/N m³ for biomass oxygen/steam gasification. Over the ranges of operating conditions examined, the maximum hydrogen yield reaches 45.16 g H₂/kg biomass. For biomass oxygen/steam gasification, the content of H₂ and CO reaches 63.27–72.56%, while the content of H₂ and CO gets to 52.19–63.31% for biomass air gasification. The ratio of H₂/CO for biomass oxygen/steam gasification reaches 0.70–0.90, which is lower than that of biomass air gasification, 1.06–1.27. The experimental and comparison results prove that biomass oxygen/steam gasification in a downdraft gasifier is an effective, relatively low energy consumption technology for hydrogen-rich gas production.     

Steam and air fed biomass gasification: Comparisons based on energy and exergy

Results are reported of thermodynamic analyses of a biomass gasification unit in which sawdust is the biomass feed and the gasifying medium is either air or steam. Energy and exergy analyses are performed for the system and each of its components. A parametric study reveals the effect of design and operating parameters on the system's performance and energy and exergy efficiencies. The results show that the adiabatic temperature of biomass gasification significantly changes with the type of the gasifying medium. In addition, the exergy and energy efficiencies are observed to be higher when air is the gasifying medium rather than steam, while the system performance and exergy efficiencies are dependent on the moisture content of the feed biomass. The results are significant because they quantify the strong dependence of biomass gasification, which can be used for syngas or hydrogen production, on moisture content, and gasifying medium.     

Potential for electrification from biomass gasification in Vanuatu

At least 170,000 rural people in the Pacific-island nation Vanuatu (approximately 70% of the country’s population) live without reliable access to electricity. The few rural households that do consume electricity incur high prices for imported diesel fuel ($2-3/liter). Thus, there is an important role in Vanuatu for expanding cost-competitive, non-diesel alternatives for electricity generation.Informed by an interdisciplinary data synthesis and an extensive series of field interviews in Vanuatu, this paper analyzes the potential for converting reportedly obsolete timber plantation land into a dedicated feedstock supply system for new small-scale biomass gasifiers. The analysis draws upon geographic mapping of electricity demand and feedstock supply, a historical assessment of Vanuatu’s forest plantations, a techno-economic evaluation of investment in 10 kW and 30 kW gasifiers, and a discussion of important social-institutional factors.This analysis identifies up to 13 geographic matches between areas of rural electricity demand and potential feedstock supply. In addition, financial modeling suggests that the levelized cost of electricity from gasification is competitive (relative to diesel systems) given capacity factors of 15-40% or greater (corresponding to a cost of $1.60/kWh or less). Further research is recommended to examine the socioeconomic and ecological aspects of feedstock plantation establishment in Vanuatu.     

A novel process simulation model for hydrogen production via reforming of biomass gasification tar

Process modeling and simulation are very important for new designs and estimation of operating variables. This study describes a new process for the production of hydrogen from lignocellulosic biomass gasification tars. The main focus of this research is to increase hydrogen production and improve the overall energy efficiency of the process. In this study, Aspen HYSYS software was used for simulation. The integration structure presented in this research includes sections like tar reforming and ash separation (Ash), combined heat and power cycle (CHP), hydrogen sulfide removal unit (HRU), water-gas shift (WGS) reactor, and gas compression as well as hydrogen separation from a mixture of gases in pressure swing adsorption (PSA). It was found that the addition of CHP cycle and the use of the plug flow reactor (PFR) model, firstly, increased the overall energy efficiency of the process by 63% compared to 29.2% of the base process. Secondly it increased the amount of hydrogen production by 0.518 kmol (H2)/kmol Tar as compared with 0.475 of the base process. Process analysis also demonstrated that the integrated process of hydrogen production from biomass gasification tars is carbon neutral.     

An experimental study on air gasification of biomass micron fuel (BMF) in a cyclone gasifier

Biomass micron fuel (BMF) produced from feedstock (energy crops, agricultural wastes, forestry residues and so on) through an efficient crushing process is a kind of powdery biomass fuel with particle size of less than 250 μm. Based on the properties of BMF, a cyclone gasifier concept has been considered in our laboratory for biomass gasification. The concept combines and integrates partial oxidation, fast pyrolysis, gasification, and tar cracking, as well as a shift reaction, with the purpose of producing a high quality of gas. In this paper, characteristics of BMF air gasification were studied in the gasifier. Without outer heat energy input, the whole process is supplied with energy produced by partial combustion of BMF in the gasifier using a hypostoichiometric amount of air. The effects of equivalence ratio (ER) and biomass particle size on gasification temperature, gas composition, gas yield, low-heating value (LHV), carbon conversion and gasification efficiency were studied. The results showed that higher ER led to higher gasification temperature and contributed to high H₂-content, but too high ER lowered fuel gas content and degraded fuel gas quality. A smaller particle was more favorable for higher gas yield, LHV, carbon conversion and gasification efficiency. And the BMF air gasification in the cyclone gasifier with the energy self-sufficiency is reliable.     

Design and thermodynamic assessment of a biomass gasification plant integrated with Brayton cycle and solid oxide steam electrolyzer for compressed hydrogen production

In this paper, a comprehensive thermodynamic evaluation of an integrated plant with biomass is investigated, according to thermodynamic laws. The modeled multi-generation plant works with biogas produced from demolition wood biomass. The plant mainly consists of a biomass gasifier cycle, clean water production system, hydrogen production, hydrogen compression, gas turbine sub-plant, and Rankine cycle. The useful outputs of this plant are hydrogen, electricity, heating and clean water. The hydrogen generation is obtained from high-temperature steam electrolyzer sub-plant. Moreover, the membrane distillation unit is used for freshwater production, and also, the hydrogen compression unit with two compressors is used for compressed hydrogen storage. On the other hand, energy and exergy analyses, as well as irreversibilities, are examined according to various factors for examining the efficiency of the examined integrated plant and sub-plants. The results demonstrate that the total energy and exergy efficiencies of the designed plant are determined as 52.84% and 46.59%. Furthermore, the whole irreversibility rate of the designed cycle is to be 37,743 kW, and the highest irreversibility rate is determined in the biomass gasification unit with 12,685 kW.     

Pyrolysis pretreatment of biomass for entrained-flow gasification

The biomass for entrained-flow gasification needs to be pretreated to significantly increase its heating value and to make it more readily transportable. The pyrolysis pretreatment was conducted in a lab scale fixed-bed reactor; the reactor was heated to elevate the temperature at 5 °C/min before holding at the desired pyrolysis temperature for 1.5 h a fixed time. The effects of pyrolysis temperature on the yield, composition and heating value of the gaseous, liquid and solid products were determined. The pyrolysis removed most oxygenated constituents of rice straw while significantly increased its energy density. Meantime, it changes the physical properties of biomass powders. The results show that the angle of repose, the angle of internal friction of semi-char decrease obviously; the bulk density of semi-char is bigger than that of biomass. This could favor the feeding of biomass. Considering yield and heating value of the solid semi-char product and the feeding problem, the best pyrolysis temperature was 400 °C. The results of this study have confirmed the feasibility of employing pyrolyzed biomass for entrained-flow gasification; they are useful for the additional studies that will be necessary for designing an efficient biomass entrained-flow gasification system.     

Numerical study on solar spouted bed reactor for conversion of biomass into hydrogen-rich gas by steam gasification

A solar-powered biomass steam gasification system was developed, in which heat transfer model, flow model and chemical model were constructed to predict the distributions of temperature, pressure, mole fraction of syngas, and solar incident flux. Several key parameters of gasifier were designed to ensure the fluidization stability. Based on the model validation, gasifier performance simulations in the design working conditions were obtained. The effects of the key variable parameters, including the rim angle of the dish collector, steam-to-biomass mass flow ratio, biomass feeding rate and the solar irradiance in the different operation working conditions on the composition of syngas, lower heating value, and efficiencies were investigated. The results reveal that the coupled system implements the best gasification performance in the design conditions which the rim angle, steam-to-biomass mass flow ratio, and biomass feeding rate are set at 60°, 0.4, and 2.5 g/min, while the LHV, carbon conversion, and gasification energy efficiencies are 11.51 MJ/m³, 78.17%, and 93.01%, respectively. The overall energy efficiency considering solar energy is 30.79%.     

Techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment of hydrogen production from different biomass gasification processes

The paper presents techno-economic analyses and life cycle assessments (LCA) of the two major gasification processes for producing hydrogen from biomass: fluidized bed (FB) gasification, and entrained flow (EF) gasification. Results indicate that the thermal efficiency of the EF-based option (56%, LHV) is 11% higher than that of the FB-based option (45%), and the minimum hydrogen selling price of the FB-based option is $0.3 per kg H₂ lower than that of the EF-based option. When a carbon capture and liquefaction system is incorporated, the efficiencies of the EF- and FB-based processes decrease to 50% and 41%, respectively. The techno-economic analysis shows that at a biomass price of $100 per tonne, either a minimum price of $115/tonne CO_2e or a minimum natural gas price of $5/GJ is required to make the minimum hydrogen selling price of biomass-based plants equivalent to that of commercial natural gas-based steam methane reforming plants. Furthermore, the LCA shows that, biomass as a carbon-neutral feedstock, negative life cycle GHG emissions are achievable in all biomass-based options.     

气化参数对高温空气气化的影响

介绍了生物质高温空气气化思想和系统的工作原理及其过程，并就气化参数对生物质高温空气气化的影响进行了深入的分析，结畏发现：随蒸汽消耗率的增加气化温度降低，而气化所得的煤气热值增大；气化温度随氮碳比的增大而升高，而气化所得的煤气热值却随氮碳比的增加而降低；煤气热值随气化温度的增加而增大，但是增加量不大。     

木屑高温空气气化实验研究

提出了一种生物质高温气化的新方法。选取木屑为气化物料，在700℃、800℃和1000℃分别进行高温气化实验。实验表明：高温气化有利于提高合成燃气热值，强化气化反应；合成燃气中CO2和CxHy的含量度热值随温度的变化规律与理论结果基本吻合，热值达到6．19MJ／m^3。证实了生物质高温气化技术的可行性。     

Supercritical water gasification of real biomass feedstocks in continuous flow system

In this study, supercritical water gasification of the selected five biomass samples (cauliflower residue, acorn, tomatoes residue, extracted acorn and hazelnut shell) was investigated. Lignocellulosic feedstocks were gasified in a continuous flow reactor at 600 °C and 35 MPa. The product gas is composed of hydrogen, carbon dioxide, methane, carbon monoxide and a small amount of C₂ compounds. Quantitative analysis of product gas was performed by Gas chromatography device. Potassium carbonate (K₂CO₃) and Trona (Na₂CO₃·NaHCO₃·2H₂O) were used as catalysts. Carbon gasification efficiencies were improved by addition of these catalysts into the reacting system. Moreover, carbon gasification efficiency changes with type of biomass that includes different ratio of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin. The H₂ yield (mol gas/kg C in feed) of acorn in the presence of Trona was found to be 7 times higher than that of without catalyst.