Evaluation of Gas Composition Obtained from Gasification of Pellets and Blends with Agricultural Wastes

Abstract

The gas produced by gasification is more versatile than the original solid biomass and can be applied as raw material for chemical industry and as fuel for the electrical and thermal energy production. Small gasification plants are being considered as an option for electrical energy generation in remote areas where agriculture wastes can be found easily. In this way, the aim of this work was to evaluate the characteristics of the gas composition of co-gasification using pine pellets and blends with agricultural wastes. The experiments were carried out in duplicate in a pilot scale fixed bed downdraft gasifier, GEK Power Pallet 20kW. It was performed experimental runs with 100 % pine pellets, 80 % pine pellets and 20 % agriculture wastes, and 80 % pine pellets with 15.4 % agriculture wastes and 4.6 % of glycerol used as an agglutinant agent. The samples were analyzed by GC-FID/TCD. The moisture of different feedstocks varied between 8.00 and 10.88.   The results of the produced gas show an average composition of 37.45% CO and  15.79% H2, and LHV 7,155 kJ/kg for gasification of 100 % pine pellets. While the mixture of pine pellets and agriculture wastes resulted in a gas with 32.13% CO and 20.10% H2, and LHV of 6,663.4 kJ/kg. When added glycerol, the gas composition to CO was 20.52 % and to H2 11.21 % with LHV of 4,507.4 kJ/kg.  The results indicate that the gasifier is compatible with the mixture of agricultural residues and pines pellets in co-gasification.