The Chariton Valley Biomass Power Project, sponsored by the U. S. Department of Energy Biomass Power Program, has the goal of converting switchgrass grown on marginal farmland in southern Iowa into electric power. Two energy conversion options are under evaluation: co-firing switchgrass with coal in an existing utility boiler and gasification of switchgrass for use in a carbonate fuel cell. Thi...

In this paper we present the conceptual design for the optimization of FT-diesel production process from switchgrass via gasification of biomass. We propose a limited superstructure where the process starts with the gasification of the biomass. Two different alternatives are evaluated, direct and indirect gasification. The gas obtained is cleaned up and its composition adjusted in terms of the ...

Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) modeling applications of the biomass gasification process help to optimize the gasifier. This study aims to investigate the impact of several physical parameters on the behavior of gasification in a fixed-bed downdraft gasifier. To that end, the study presents a comparison of the results computed using the Fire Dynamics Simulator (FDS) model with experimental r...

Gasification is the thermochemical conversion of organic feedstocks mainly into combustible syngas (CO and H(2)) along with other constituents. It has been widely used to convert coal into gaseous energy carriers but only has been recently looked at as a process for producing energy from biomass. This study explores the potential of gasification for energy production and treatment of municipal ...

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 h...

The use of renewable energy sources is becoming increasingly necessary, if we are to achieve the changes required to address the impacts of global warming. Biomass is the most common form of renewable energy, widely used in the third world but until recently, less so in the Western world. Latterly much attention has been focused on identifying suitable biomass species, which can provide high-en...

Solar dried sewage sludge (SS) conversion by pyrolysis and gasification processes has been performed, separately, using two laboratory-scale reactors, a fixed-bed pyrolyzer and a downdraft gasifier, to produce mainly hydrogen-rich syngas. Prior to SS conversion, solar drying has been conducted in order to reduce moisture content (up to 10%). SS characterization reveals that these biosolids coul...

Southern California has been proposed as a likely site for developing a hydrogen refueling infrastructure. In this paper, we apply dynamic programming to identify optimized strategies for supplying hydrogen over time in Southern California. GIS-based traffic data are used to model the location and magnitude of hydrogen demand over time. Refueling stations are sited based on the location of dema...

Biomass gasification stations are facing many hazard factors, therefore, it is necessary to make hazard assessment for them. In this study, a novel hazard assessment method called extended set pair analysis (ESPA) is proposed based on set pair analysis (SPA). However, the calculation of the connection degree (CD) requires the classification of hazard grades and their corresponding thresholds us...

Approximately 2.4 million tons of bagasse are produced each year in Iran, most of which are currently treated as waste adding to serious environmental concerns. Application of bagasse for energy production is a sustainable solution to supply the required energy within the sugar refineries and export the surplus electricity to the grid. Currently, the energy demand in Iranian sugar mills is main...