Downdraft Gasifier for Oil Palm Empty Bunches with Computational Fluid Dynamics

Abstract

The demand for palm oil increases every year and this condition proportional to the increase in waste from the manufacture of palm oil. Therefore, this study aims to determine the potential of empty palm fruit bunches to be used as renewable energy. This research simulated Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) gasification with empty oil palm fruit bunches using a downdraft gasifier, then simulated with three variations of air flow rates. This is done because the air flow rate is very influential on the temperature and gasification results. The best and uniform variation was obtained at a water flow rate of 25 L/min with a resulting temperature of 28 °C to 957 °C and with an even temperature coverage in the reactor. Then in this study the syngas H2, CO, CO2 and CH4 were obtained which were not evenly distributed in the reactor at all variations of air flow rate, and for the acquisition of syngas H2, CO, CO2 and CH4 the most were obtained at variations of air flow rate of 25 L/min.