Exergy Analysis of Syngas Production via Biomass Thermal Gasification

M. ECHEGARAY; R. A. RODRÍGUEZ; G. D. MAZZA; M. R. CASTRO

International Journal of Thermodynamics

International Centre for Applied Thermodynamics

Lugar: Estambul; Año: 2016 vol. 19 p. 178 - 184

Biomass has great potential as a clean,renewable feedstock for producing modern energy carriers. This paper focuses onthe process of biomass wastes gasification, where the synthesis gas may subsequentlybe used for the production of electricity, fuels and chemicals. Thegasification process is one of the least-efficient operations in the wholebiomass-to-energy technology chain and an analysis of the efficiency of thegasifier alone can substantially contribute to the efficiency improvement ofthis chain. In this work, biomass wastes from canneries (peach pits) and wineindustry (marcs and stalks) used for the syngas production are investigated.Thermodynamic indicators of process performance based on the second law (exergyanalysis) was utilized in order to evaluate the effect of different operationalparameters (temperature, supply air/stoichiometric air, supply steam/carbonratio and moisture feed). The exergetic efficiency of the gasification processdecreases when the all considered operational parameters increase. Thegasification of peach pits shows the maximum values of the exergetic efficiencyin all conditions.