Experimental Studies of Co-gasification with Coal and Waste Wood of Downdraft Gasifier System

Abstract

High prices of oil and natural gas are leading to an increased interest in "Energy Conservation" technologies such as biomass gasification, methanation, liquidification and solidification. Heating system based on wood, fuel, electricity, coal/lignite are common in some industries. Environmental pollution, poor process control and cost are some of the limitation of these systems. Lignite being low grad coal forms clinker when used as a fuel in boilers of thermal power stations. Gujarat has large reserves of lignite. In this work, an attempt is made to evaluate lignite as a fuel in downdraft gasier for decentralizes power generation gasifier. A 10 kWe downdraft gasifier was developed with the financial support of Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of INDIA. This study presents the results of experiments investigation on different fuel mix (100% lignite, 90% lignite -10% wood, 85% lignite - 15% wood, 80% lignite - 20% wood, 75% lignite - 25% wood) were taken and performance of gasifier with above fuel mix was attempted. It was observed that efficiency of gasifier much dependent of wood concentration in fuel mix. It is observed that maximum efficiency of the order of 72% was obtained with 25% wood concentration. If experiments were conducted with high wood concentration in fuel mix, certainly efficiency would have increases. Since the major objective of present work is to analyze the use of lignite in downdraft gasifier. Present study and observetions give detailed estimate to eliminate the difficulties during lignite gasification in downdraft gasifier system.