Co-gasification of coal and wood in a dual fluidized bed gasifier

In the last decade the reduction of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels became a worldwide topic. Co-gasification of coal and wood provides an opportunity to combine the advantages of the well-researched usage of fossil fuels such as coal with CO2-neutral biomass. Gasification itself is a technology with many advantages. The producer gas can be used in many ways; for electric power generation in a gas engine or gas turbine, for Fischer-Tropsch synthesis of liquid fuels and also for production of gaseous products such as synthetic natural gas (bio SNG). Moreover, the use of the producer gas in fuel cells is under investigation. The mixture of coal and wood leads to the opportunity to choose the gas composition as best befits the desired process. Within this study the focus of investigation was of gasification of coal and wood in various ratios and the resulting changes in producer gas composition. Co-gasification of coal and wood leads to linear producer gas composition changes with linear changing load ratios (coal/wood). Hydrogen concentrations rise with increasing coal ratio, while CO concentrations decrease. Due to the lower sulfur and nitrogen content of wood, levels of the impurities NH3 and H2S in the producer gas fall with decreasing coal ratio. It is also shown that the majority of sulfur is released in the gasification zone and, therefore, no further cleaning of the flue gas is necessary. All mixture ratios, from 100 energy% to 0 energy% coal, performed well in the 100 kW dual fluidized bed gasifier. Although the gasifier was originally designed for wood, an addition of coal as fuel in industrial sized plants based on the same technology should pose no problems. (c) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.