Experimental assessment of woody biomass gasification in a hybridized solar powered reactor featuring direct and indirect heating modes

Solar thermochemical gasification is an opportunity for the production of sustainable fuels from carbonaceous resources including biomass. Substituting conventional processes by solar-driven technologies may enable cleaner H2-rich syngas while saving feedstock and alleviating CO2 emissions. This work addresses hybrid solar-autothermal mm-sized beech wood particles in a lab-scale 1.5 kWth spouted-bed reactor. Hybridization under reduced solar power input was performed injecting oxygen additional biomass inside gasifier complementary heat supply. Increasing O2:C molar ratios (in range 0.14–0.58) allowed to reactor cavity walls progressively, gradually impairing performance with increase content decrease cold gas efficiency (CGE). Gasification mixed H2O O2 then assessed at thermodynamic equilibrium global trends were validated experimentally, showing that control H2:CO ratio compatible in-situ combustion. The impact reaction temperature (1200–1300 °C) heating mode (direct or indirect) experimentally studied during both allothermal gasification. Higher H2 CO yields achieved high temperatures (1300 direct heating. able counterbalance 40% drop nominal input, measured CGE reached 0.82, versus values higher than 1