Steam gasification of oil palm trunk waste for clean syngas production

Waste and agricultural residues offer significant potential for harvesting chemical energy with simultaneous reduction of environmental pollution, providing carbon neutral (or even carbon negative) sustained energy production, energy security and alleviating social concerns associated with the wastes. Steam gasification is now recognized as one of the most efficient approaches for waste to clean energy conversion. Syngas generated during the gasification process can be utilized for electric power generation, heat generation and for other industrial and domestic uses. In this paper results obtained from the steam assisted gasification of oil palm trunk waste are presented. A batch type gasifier has been used to examine the syngas characteristics from gasification of palm trunk waste using steam as the gasifying agent. Reactor temperature was fixed at 800 °C. Results show initial high values of syngas flow rate, which is attributed to rapid devolatilization of the sample. Approximately over 50% of the total syngas generated was obtained during the first five minutes of the process. An increase in steam flow rate accelerated the gasification reactions and resulted in reduced gasification time. The effect of steam flow rate on the apparent thermal efficiency has also been investigated. Variation in steam flow rate slightly affected the apparent thermal efficiency and was found to be very high. Properties of the syngas obtained from the gasification of oil palm trunk waste have been compared to other samples under similar operating conditions. Oil palm trunk waste yielded more syngas, energy and hydrogen than that from other types of biomass such as mangrove wood, paper and food waste.

► Initial high values of syngas flow rate are attributed to rapid devolatilization.
► Over 50% of syngas generated was obtained during the first five minutes of the process.
► Increase in steam flow rate resulted in reduced gasification time.
► Variation in steam flow rate slightly affected the apparent thermal efficiency.
► Oil palm yielded more energy than that from mangrove wood, paper and food waste.