Gasification of biomass for hydrogen and power production: Efficiency and environmental assessment

Abstract

This study focuses on efficiency and environmental impact assessmentsof steam biomass gasification and gasification-solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) integratedsystem for power and hydrogen production. Biomass is considered as themain energy source of the system, and it is changed into gaseous componentsthrough gasification process where steam is used as a drying and gasificationmedium. The gasifier is proposed to be integrated with SOFC unit for powerproduction after extracting part of the produced syngas for hydrogen production.Thermodynamic model is introduced to analyze the gasification process and theelectrochemical process through the SOFC. The effect of steam biomass ratio onthe system performance is investigated. Environmental assessment is performedbased on the carbon dioxide produced from the system with respect to the generateduseful products.