Gasification of High Heating-rate Biomass-derived Chars at Elevated Temperatures

In this study, gasification behavior of high heating-rate chars were investigated using an entrained flow reactor with an optical particle-sizing pyrometer. Two biomass chars produced from forest residue and torrefied forest residue as well as one coal char produced from low sulfur Black Thunder subbituminous coal have been gasified at temperature over 1700 K. Both the char surface temperatures and surrounding gas temperatures were precisely measured. Despite large discrepancies in constituents, the two biomass chars showed rather similar surface temperatures at the tested conditions. However, a slight lower surface temperature was obtained by the coal char gasification. A comprehensive model was also applied to aid understanding of the conversion process of char gasification. One set of intrinsic kinetic parameters for both the heterogonous water-gas reaction and the Boudouard reaction were found to effectively capture the experimental data at the two investigated conditions.