Plasma Gas Cleaning Process for the Conversion of Biomass Tar Model Compounds Into Syngas*

Biomass has been highlighted as a key renewable feedstock to respond to the vital societal need for a step change in the sustainability of energy production which is required to combat climate change. Gasification of biomass wastes represents a major sustainable route to produce syngas (H2 and CO) from a source which is renewable and CO2-neutral. However, one of the major challenges in the gasification process is the contamination of the product syngas with tar which causes major process and syngas end-use problems 1. Non-thermal plasma technology provides an attractive and promising alternative to the conventional approaches for the conversion of tars into clean fuels at a relatively low temperature.1S. Liu, D. Mei, L. Wang, and X. Tu, Chemical Engineering Journal, 307, 2017, pp. 793–802.