5^th World Bioenergy Congress and Expo

Biography

Biography: Souman Rudra

Abstract

Gasification is a complex process and determining gasification characteristics experimentally is a time-consuming process. Using CFD models to predict and examine about gasification characteristics, in the various scenario can be time saving and safe. This paper primarily discusses the results of a CFD model, which simulates gasification characteristics of Birchwood. During the work, a variation of producer gas yield, syngas composition and cold gas efficiency of the syngas were investigated with a variable biomass particle size.  A 3D CFD model of a fixed bed downdraft gasifier has been developed. Euler –Euler approach has been used to model the gas phase reactions while Lagrangian approach has been used to model the solid- gas reactions. For the simulations, biomass (Birchwood) particles with two different diameter sizes were used. They were 11.5mm and 9.18 mm. In this work, gasification parameters were examined within the equivalence ratio (ER) range from 0.2 to 0.5.  The simulated results were validated using the actual fixed bed downdraft gasifier available at UIA, Norway. CO, CO₂, CH₄ and H₂ mass fractions of the syngas were measured along with the calculated values of syngas yield and cold gas efficiency (CGE). With the 9.18mm diameter birchwood particle, CGE has shown an average maximum value of 59.4 % at the ER value of 0.5, which is a 4% improvement over the 11.5mm diameter biomass particle. In addition, Syngas yield has also shown an average maximum value of 2.8 Nm³/h with the 9.18 mm wood particle, which is an improvement of 0.1 Nm³/h over the 11.5 mm biomass particle.

Recent Publications:

1. Prabir Basu. (2010). Biomass Gasification and pyrolysis Practical Design and Theory. ELSEVIER. (ISBN- 0080961622).
2. Pratik N. Sheth, Babu BV. (2009) Experimental studies on producer gas generation from wood waste in a downdraft biomass gasifier. Bioresource Technology 100:3127–3133.
3. Keran D. Patel, Shah NK, Patel RN. (2013) CFD Analysis of Spatial Distribution of Various Parameters in Downdraft Gasifier.  Procedia Engineering 51: 764-769.
4. Gerun  L, Paraschiv  M, Vijeu  R, Bellettre  J, Tazerout  M, Gøbel  B, Henriksen U. (2008) Numerical investigation of the partial oxidation in a two-stage downdraft gasifier”, Fuel 87:1383
5. Sarker S, Nielsen HK (2015) Preliminary fixed-bed downdraft gasification of birch woodchips. International journal of environmental science 12: 2119
6. Souman Rudra, Lasse Rosendahl, Morten B. Blarke. (2015) Process analysis of a biomass-based quad-generation plant for combined power, heat, cooling, and synthetic natural gas production. Energy Conversion and Management 106: 1276–1285