Use of light scattering for online detection of tar and particulate matter from biomass gasification

Abstract

Gasification is one of the most promising technology for an efficient use of biomass fuels. A gate-keeper issue that is holding this technology from being widely used is gas conditioning. All gasifiers architecture suffer in some degree due to tar and particulate content in the gas stream. Depending on the final application, different level of pollutant may preclude a specific use. The cleaning level is more and more relevant moving from IC engines to gas turbine or fuel cells. For this reason this work want to explore an on-line method for tar and particulate detecting using a light scattering system. The proposed solution is based on a dual stage gas dilution combined with the use of a commercial air monitoring device.