International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Vol.44, No.28, 14387-14394, 2019
High quality product gas from biomass steam gasification combined with torrefaction and carbon dioxide capture processes
Gasification is currently recognized as a mature technology to convert biomass into useful and versatile product gas for further energy and fuel applications. However, there are some remaining problems relating to the process operation and process efficiency due to inherent properties of biomass feedstock such as high moisture content, low energy density and high oxygen content. Strategies to improve the efficiency of biomass gasification as well as the quality of product gas are thus required. For this purpose, a combined process of torrefaction, gasification, and carbon dioxide capture is developed and simulated in a commercial simulator to investigate the performance of a biomass gasification coupled with a pre-treatment and a post-treatment processes. The results show that the quality of product gas is enhanced when combining gasification with a torrefaction and a CO2 capture processes. The heating value of the product gas and the cold gas efficiency are both increased with additional torrefaction. The CO2 capture process using monoethanolamine offers a CO2 removal efficiency of about 83% and consequently increase the product gas heating value up to 27%. (C) 2018 Hydrogen Energy Publications LLC. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.