Biomass gasification with NiO/Olivine catalysts in fluidised bed gasifier

Tar removal from biomass gasification gas is a crucial problem in applying syngas from biomass for its downstream applications. Catalytic biomass gasification has given promising results for tar cracking. A few research groups have investigated the use of olivine for tar cracking [2,3,4,7,8,9,10]. The presence of oxides of iron and magnesium in the mineral olivine give it the ability to crack higher hydrocarbons termed as tars. Olivine surely does have sustainable physical properties for the harsh conditions of a fluidised bed gasifier. Untreated olivine was previously compared by us with dolomite in cracking model tar compounds. Modifying the olivine by calcination at high temperatures showed very promising results towards tar cracking. Also tests related to attrition resistance showed that olivine is very capable of being the gasification catalyst as compared to dolomite. For the study of tar cracking and tar reforming nickel oxide is known to be effective. Therefore, the behaviour of a nickel oxide on olivine catalyst under reducing conditions with respect to tar cracking is studied.