Air gasification of oil palm waste over dolomite in a fluidized bed

Authors: POOYA LAHIJANI, ZAINAL ALIMUDDIN ZAINAL, MAEDEH MOHAMMADI

Abstract: Air gasification of oil palm empty fruit bunch was carried out in a fluidized bed gasifier. Calcined dolomite was used as the catalytic bed material. The effect of bed temperature (650--1050 °C) on the quality of the producer gas was examined. During the gasification experiment, a producer gas with improved quality was obtained at high temperatures, but agglomeration of the bed material was realized as the major concern at temperatures above 850 °C. Thus, the temperature was reduced and the quality of the product gas was assessed through a set of experiments designed by response surface methodology. The bed temperature (T = 650--850 °C) and equivalence ratio (ER = 0.18--0.28) were selected as the 2 process variables. The experimental results were reasonably fitted to the developed model. The optimum conditions were T = 850 °C and ER = 0.22 at which the HHV = 5.39 (MJ/m^3) could be attained without any agglomeration of the bed material.

Keywords: Gasification, fluidized bed, dolomite, palm empty fruit bunch

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