Combined heat and power production in a pilot-scale biomass gasification system: Experimental study and kinetic simulation using ASPEN Plus

This study highlights the opportunities and challenges of pomegranate wood chips (PWC) gasification in a pilot -scale multi-reactor gasification system integrated with an internal combustion engine for combined heat and power generation. PWC with a higher heating value of 19.54 MJ/kg were converted into syngas in a downdraft gasifier and then the resultant syngas was utilized to generate power at two electrical power loads of 7 and 10 kW. The experimental results showed that lower electrical output (7 kW) leads to syngas production with higher H2 and CO molar concentrations (21.5% H2 and 30.08% CO). Increasing the power load to 10 kW resulted in a 13.35% and 13.76% reduction in H2 and CO molar concentrations, respectively. ASPEN Plus coupled with an external FORTRAN subroutine was used to kinetically simulate the experimental system. Compared to the equilibrium and modified equilibrium models available in the literature, kinetic simulation results showed perfect agreement with the experimental results; it gave syngas composition with ideal accuracy and acceptable mean absolute percentage errors of 8.91 and 1.98 for H2 and CO, respectively.