Performance of a biomass fueled two-stage micro gas turbine (MGT) system with hot air production heat recovery unit

• Biomass fueled combined heat and power micro gas turbine system was developed.
• Producer gas was derived from biomass using pressurized gasification process.
• Pressurized producer gas combustion was simulated and tested experimentally.
• Pressurized producer gas was used for micro gas turbine firing.
• Two turbochargers with low speed generator were used as the micro gas turbine.

A two-stage micro gas turbine (MGT) with low speed generator was developed to operate fully on producer gas (PG) from a pressurized downdraft gasifier without any auxiliary fossil fuel. It is an efficient and environment friendly system for hot air production for any industrial drying process. For the Low heating value PG combustion, a pressurized cyclone combustor (PCC) was designed and optimized using computational fluid dynamics simulation. The system was characterized experimentally with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and PG fuels in dual-fuel mode and then with pressurized PG in single-fuel mode. The system as a combined heat and power (CHP) has achieved an overall efficiency of about 58% with 35 kWth hot air production as thermal output of the system.