Assessing the gasification potential of five woodchips species by employing a lab-scale fixed-bed downdraft reactor

• Fixed-bed downdraft lab scale gasification of 3 forest and 2 energy crops.
• Gasification condition was varied in-terms of ER (0.19–0.80).
• Energy crops gave mean bed temperature >750 °C and highest H2 yield.
• Spruce resulted inferior gasification performance than that of the other biomass.

This paper is aimed to assess the performance of air blown fixed-bed downdraft gasification of local lignocellulosic biomasses which in perspective of Southern Norway are both available and sustainable. Long rotation forest crops birch, oak and spruce, coupled with energy crops poplar and willow were used as feedstocks. The gasification conditions undertaken were widely varied in-terms of air (∼3.20–4.20 N m3/h) and fuel flow (∼1.70–2.10 kg/h) so that the corresponding equivalence ratio (ER) differed (0.19–0.80) and ultimately reflected to other operational parameters such as bed temperature (∼550–760 °C maximum), producer gas yield (∼1.50–2.30 N m3/kg, wet base), cold gas efficiency (∼35–51%), carbon conversion efficiency (∼61–76%) and so on. An emphasis was also placed on evaluating material balance by accounting the by-products (such as tar, char) of gasification so that the system reliability is identified. Overall, the gasification performance of different woody biomass was found viable over a broad range of operating condition which is appealing in contributing this technology in the context of regional bioenergy and thus towards the renewable energy.