Effective Utilization of Prosopis Juliflora for Cooking Purposes Through Gasification Technology

Abstract

Gasification involves the conversion of biomass feedstock to useful products such as biochar and producer gas with the latter being used for cooking purposes. The feedstock selection is critical for gasification that can address the social concerns such as land availability for the feedstock growth. Hence, this paper aims at testing Prosopis Juliflora (PJ) as an effective feedstock for the gasifiers. In traditional wood fired stoves, PJ is recently preferred for fuel wood due to its high calorific value and growth rate, cycling time of six years (comparable to any other fuel wood species), coppicing power and its capability to produce more extensive root system and deeper penetration to rehabilitate sodic soils more effectively. The characteristics such as moisture content, volatile matter and ash content of PJ were 9.3 %, 83.05% and 1.7 % respectively. The calorific value was 4952 kcal/kg and these characteristics make PJ as an effective feedstock for the gasification process. Further TGA analysis confirms the feasibility of PJ as a suitable candidate for gasification. The composition of the producer gas produced during the gasification was dominated by carbon monoxide (20%), hydrogen (12%), nitrogen (45.3 %), carbon dioxide (17.5%) and methane (3.25%). The gas was scrubbed using a fabric filter to remove the tar content thereby reducing tar coagulation in the stove and to increase the thermal efficiency of the gas.