Original research
Performance analysis of a co-gasifier for organic waste in agriculture
1 Department of Energy Engineering, Graduate School of the Environment and Energy, Science and Research Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Power and Water University of Technology, Tehran, Iran
3 Department of Environmental Science, Islamic Azad University, Khorasgan Branch, Isfahan, Iran
International Journal Of Recycling of Organic Waste in Agriculture 2012, 1:6 doi:10.1186/2251-7715-1-6
Published: 14 September 2012Abstract
Background
Agricultural waste has been proposed as an alternative energy resource to meet fossil fuel crisis, green house emission, and other environmental impacts worldwide. In Iran, rice husk and bagasse are main resources of biomass which can be used to produce syngas. This paper deals with a simplified model of combined gasification of coal and biomass processes considering chemical equilibrium.
Results
It should be noticed that the CO2 which is produced from agricultural waste gasification is natural because the biomass absorbs CO2 from nature and gives it back after gasifying; however, mixing agricultural waste with coal leads to enrich syngas quality and gasifier efficiency.
Conclusions
In this regard, an advanced coding was developed to simulate the thermodynamics of the co-gasifier and to find the produced syngas composition. The effects of moisture content, steam-to-biomass ratio, and gasifier temperature are then discussed on the system performance. Additionally, co-gasification of rice husk/coal was compared with co-gasification of bagasse/coal. The results indicated that adding coal to biomass increases lower heating value of syngas from 4,694 kJ/Nm3 to 5,321 kJ/Nm3 and gasifier efficiency from 71.29% to 77.85%.
