Comparison of a Solvent-Free Tar Quantification Method to the International Energy Agencyâ•Žs Tar Measurement Protocol

This paper presents a new method for measuring tar concentration in biomass-derived producer gas streams. This solvent-free method is much simpler than the evaporative method of the International Energy Agency (IEA) tar protocol. In tests on producer gas from a fluidized bed biomass gasifier this so-called dry condenser method yielded tar measurements with precision better than 5% and accuracy averaging to within 10% of the IEA tar protocol. Comparisons of water vapor concentrations in producer gas as determined by the two methodologies showed poor agreement, which appears to be due to the low precision of both techniques for this measurement, possibly the result of dissolved hydrocarbons in the recovered aqueous phases.