Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
205960 Fuel 2015 13 Pages PDF
Abstract

•Biomass gasification gas could be reformed for around 500 h.•Both steam and autothermal reforming are feasible depending on gas composition.•To avoid carbon formation H2O/CREF > 4 and O/CREF > 8 are recommended.•Selection of reforming approach has only limited impact to the overall efficiency.

Reforming is a key enabling technology for the production of tar and hydrocarbon free synthesis gas from biomass. In this work, two different reforming concepts, steam and autothermal reforming, were studied for cleaning of biomass-derived gasification gas. Long-term laboratory scale experiments (around 500 h) were carried out with two model biomass gasification gas compositions with low and medium hydrocarbon loads. The experiments were made using nickel and precious metal catalysts at atmospheric pressure and at temperatures around 900–950 °C. The deactivation of the catalysts was followed. Gas with low hydrocarbon content could be steam reformed with nickel and precious metal catalyst. Both autothermal and steam reforming modes were studied for gas with medium hydrocarbon content. In steam reforming mode, the catalysts deactivated more than in autothermal mode. Based on the experiments H2O/CREF molar ratio above 4 and O/CREF molar ratio above 8 are recommended. A concept assessment was carried out to examine plant level impacts of the reforming approaches to synthesis gas production. The results showed that the choice of reforming concept has only limited impact to the overall efficiency of synthetic biofuel production.

Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Chemical Engineering Chemical Engineering (General)
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