Preprint Article Version 1 Preserved in Portico This version is not peer-reviewed

Plasma-Assisted Biomass Gasification in a Drop Tube Reactor at Atmospheric Pressure

Version 1 : Received: 5 April 2018 / Approved: 5 April 2018 / Online: 5 April 2018 (11:13:38 CEST)

A peer-reviewed article of this Preprint also exists.

Pang, Y.; Bahr, L.; Fendt, P.; Zigan, L.; Will, S.; Hammer, T.; Baldauf, M.; Fleck, R.; Müller, D.; Karl, J. Plasma-Assisted Biomass Gasification with Focus on Carbon Conversion and Reaction Kinetics Compared to Thermal Gasification. Energies 2018, 11, 1302. Pang, Y.; Bahr, L.; Fendt, P.; Zigan, L.; Will, S.; Hammer, T.; Baldauf, M.; Fleck, R.; Müller, D.; Karl, J. Plasma-Assisted Biomass Gasification with Focus on Carbon Conversion and Reaction Kinetics Compared to Thermal Gasification. Energies 2018, 11, 1302.

Abstract

Compared to conventional allothermal gasification of solid fuels (e.g. biomass, charcoal, lignite etc.), plasma-assisted gasification offers an efficient method to apply energy into the gasification process to increase the flexibility of operation conditions and to increase the reaction kinetics. In particular, non-thermal plasmas (NTP) are promising, in which thermal equilibrium is not reached and electrons have substantially higher mean energy than gas molecules. Thus it is generally assumed that in NTP the supplied energy is utilized more efficiently for generating free radicals initiating gasification reactions than thermal plasma processes. In order to investigate this hypothesis, we compared purely thermal to non-thermal plasma assisted gasification of biomass in steam in a drop tube reactor at atmospheric pressure. The NTP was provided by means of gliding arcs between two electrodes aligned in the inlet steam flow. Electric power of about 1 kW was supplied using a high voltage generator operating at frequencies between 70 and 150 kHz and voltage amplitudes up to 10 kV. A laser-assisted optical method (Raman spectroscopy) was applied for measuring the gas temperature both in the conventionally heated steam and flow-down of the visible plasma filaments of the gliding arcs. Reaction yields and rates were evaluated using these measured gas temperatures. The first experimental results have shown that the non-thermal plasma not only promotes the carbon conversion of the fuel particles, but also accelerates the reaction kinetics. The carbon conversion is increased by nearly 10% using wood powder as the fuel. With charcoal powder more than 3% are converted into syngas.

Keywords

non-thermal plasma; wood gasification; charcoal gasification; water steam gasification; plasma stability; optical temperature measurement; carbon conversion; reaction kinetics; Arrhenius diagram

Subject

Engineering, Energy and Fuel Technology

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