Wood gasification in a lab-scale bubbling fluidized bed: Experiment and simulation

Abstract

In theory, an integrated biomass gasification and fuel cell system has a higher overall plant efficiency when compared to the efficiency of biomass gasification combined with simple combustion systems and gas engines. In order to develop a prototype of this new concept of power plant operating in the range of 150kW to 5MW, several institutes of the Max Planck Society and the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft in Germany have been working on the ProBio project with focus on the theoretical and experimental investigation of an integrated 1-2kWe system. The paper will firstly describe the gasification unit of the system: a lab-scale atmospheric bubbling fluidized bed gasifier. Wood gasification experiments were conducted and the influence of operation parameters, i.e. gasification agents, equivalence ratio ER and steam to biomass ratio S/B on gas yield and gas composition was analyzed. In parallel with the experimental work, chemical kinetics of wood gasification was studied and simulated. Furthermore, simulation of bubbling fluidized bed hydrodynamics at high temperature, using commercial computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software FLUENT, was also conducted to better understand the phenomenon of fluidization inside the bed.