A comparative study of charcoal gasification in two types of spouted bed reactors

Gasification is considered to be a favourable method for converting a solid fuel into a more versatile gaseous fuel. Performance of a gasifier depends on the design of the gasifier, type of fuel used and air flow rate, etc. The applications of spouted bed for a variety of processes such as drying, coating, pyrolysis, gasification and combustion have been reported. Gasification of solid fuels in a spouted bed, which has certain potential advantages over other fluid bed configurations, appears to be an under-exploited technique so far. Central jet distributors are the most commonly used in the experimental studies that has been reported in the literature. Circular slit distributor is a new concept. This paper presents results of a comparative experimental study on air gasification of charcoal in central jet and circular slit inert sand spouted beds. The experiments were carried for an equivalence ratio of 0.25. The effect of spouting velocity and type of the distributor on the gasification performance were discussed. The steady state dense bed temperature varied between 979 and 1183 °C for central jet spouted bed and between 964 and 1235 °C for circular slit spouted bed. At higher spouting velocities, the gasification efficiency of the circular slit spouted bed was slightly more compared with that of central jet spouted bed.