Evaluation and Performance of Downdraft Gasifier with Different Feedstocks

Abstract

India is the seventh largest country as per area and the second largest country as per population in the world. As a developing country, India’s 69% of population live in the country side, depending on farming and animal husbandry and have sufficient amount of farming and agriculture waste. These wastes can be used to generate energy through the process of Gasification. This process can contribute to the demand for heat, electricity and syngas. In this work, an attempt is made to evaluate different biomass as a fuel in downdraft gasifier for decentralizes power generation. This study presents the results of experiment investigation on effect of fuel size on gas generation rate, calorific value of producer gas and gasifier efficiency. It has been found out that gasification performance; product gas yields, chemical composition, calorific value of producer gas and efficiency are significantly impacted by the size of fuels. For the experimental purpose, different sizes of different biomass were selected and experiments were carried out on downdraft gasifier (10kWe). It was observed that coconut shell gives better output compare to sugarcane bagasse in terms of gas calorific value and efficiency. It was observed that particle size 30-40 mm with coconut shell is better feedstock (efficiency 72.99%) comparatively in present study.