Performance and chemical composition of waste palm cooking oil as scrubbing medium for tar removal from biomass producer gas

• This study deals with the performance of various scrubbing mediums for tar removal.
• Waste palm cooking oil is a potential as oil scrubbing medium for tar removal.
• Combination of activated carbon with oil increases quality of the fuel gas for ICE.

Producer gas, a product of biomass gasification contains not only combustible gases but also tar which is an unwanted and detrimental substance to downstream applications. This paper presents a study on tar removal using laboratory prepared waste palm cooking oil (LWPCO), restaurant collected waste palm cooking oil (CWPCO), diesel oil and water as scrubbing mediums. The experiment succeeded in removing class 4 tar using diesel oil and CWPCO as scrubbing mediums. The unsaturated hydrocarbons (oleic and linoleic acids) present in the CWPCO resulted in the highest tar removal efficiency of 86% (excluding benzene). Besides utilizing unused residual material, application of CWPCO for tar removal can reduce operational cost. Combination of CWPCO with activated carbon provides a high quality producer gas with tar content of 0.022 gmn−3 and tar removal efficiency of 98%, which can be safely used in internal combustion engines (ICE).