Hydrogen rich syngas production by air-steam gasification of citrus peel residues from citrus juice manufacturing: Experimental and simulation activities

Hydrogen rich syngas could play a relevant role as clean source of energy and chemicals. Further environmental and economic advantages can be reached if syngas is produced by residues or wastes. This work aims at exploring the potential of citrus peel (CP) air-steam gasification for the production of hydrogen rich syngas. The study of the gasification process was developed by means of a bench-scale fluidized bed reactor, which operates in a temperature range of 700-850 °C and with a variable steam to biomass ration (S/B) from 0.5 to 1.25. The experimental results were used to validate a developed air-steam gasification model. Limited to the investigated conditions, both experimental and model results found that the highest hydrogen yield was obtained at 750 °C and S/B = 1.25, reaching 0.65 and 0.69 Nm3/kgbiom respectively. The pyrolysis results have been used for simulating the pyrolysis step that is part of the gasification model. The gasification and combustion steps were modeled using a thermodynamic approach based on the minimization of the Gibbs free energy.