Title:
Circulating Fluidized Bed Gasification of 1st and 2nd Generation Biofuel Seed Cakes after Oil Extraction
Author(s):
Christodoulou, C., Grimekis, D., Tsiotas, K., Papamichael, I., Panopoulos, K., Vamvuka, D., Karellas, S., Kakaras, E.
Document(s):
Paper
Abstract:
First generation biofuels consider fuels which are derived from edible crops, whereas second generation from nonedible crops. Oil crops which are used to produce biodiesel or extract chemicals might be categorized according to being edible or not to both groups. The use of these biofuels in biorefinery operations has many heat and power demands. The thermochemical process of gasification of the resulting residues from oil crops processing, such as seed cakes, could cover these energetic requirements. Contrary to the gasification of woody materials which has been investigated extensively, there is very fewer data on gasification applications of residues from newly introduced oil crops after their oil extraction. In this work the agroresidues of sunflower and jatropha cakes after their oil extraction were tested: the energy crop of sunflower is a first generation biofuel whereas jatropha’s is second generation. Air gasification tests of these cakes were conducted in a 100 kW thermal atmospheric circulating fluidized bed (CFB). The CFB consists of a stainless steel cylindrical tube with 78 mm internal diameter (ID) and 6.0 m in height. Although the process was autothermal, the gasifier was heated by cylindrical radiative electric resistances, which were placed along the bed height. The main components of the product gas were analyzed by means of a multicomponent gas analyzer instrument (ABB AO2000). The sampling of tars was conducted by tar protocol (CEN BT/TF 143) every 2 hours for corresponding temperature. The effect of the gasification temperature (750oC, 800oC) on the distribution of the product gas and tar formation from these fuels were investigated and compared to previous results of willow gasification. Experimental results show that the averaged concentration of H2 obtained from cakes was higher than in the syngas from tests with wood (Willow) gasification. The composition of ash in each fuel in inorganic elements determines if it is appropriate for such certain application. Consequently, various characterization techniques such as Xray Fluorescence (XRF), Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA), Ash Fusion Temperature (AFT) were performed to determine the physicochemical properties of each ash fuel in detail. Also, after the end of gasification trials fly ash samples from the particulates remove system of the installation and bottom ash samples were collected. In these samples analyses (XRF) were performed in order to determine the fate of inorganic elements of fuel ash.
Keywords:
biorefinery, gasification, fluidized bed, residues
Topic:
R&D on Biomass Conversion Technologies for Heating, Electricity and Chemicals
Subtopic:
Gasification for power, CHP and polygeneration
Event:
21st European Biomass Conference and Exhibition
Session:
2CV.3.4
Pages:
759 - 770
ISBN:
978-88-89407-53-0
Paper DOI:
10.5071/21stEUBCE2013-2CV.3.4
Price:
FREE
