Tailored syngas production from the gasification of biogenic waste in the presence of a CO2 sorbent

Abstract

Syngas production via steam gasification is one of the thermochemical processes with the greatest potential for obtaining synthetic fuels from a solid fuel, especially indirect gasification in a dual fluidised bed system where the energy needed for gasification is provided by the circulating material from a high temperature secondary reactor. When the circulating material is a CO2 sorbent, a sorption enhanced gasification (SEG) system results where the circulating solid, in addition to the energy provided by sensible heat, supplies additional heat by means of the exothermic carbonation reaction with the CO2 generated from biomass gasification. In the presented work, the SEG process was studied for a biogenic waste material (consisting of the organic fraction of municipal solid waste) in a 30 kWth bubbling fluidised bed reactor using lime as CO2 sorbent. The effect of the main operating variables (temperature, steam-to-carbon (S/C) ratio and sorbent-to-biomass ratio (Ca/C)) on gas quality was assessed. M-modules (M=(H2-CO2)/(CO+CO2)) between 1.2 to almost 4 have been obtained acting on the variables that mostly affect the permanent gas composition, i.e. gasification temperature and/or sorbent-to-biomass ratio.