Title : Syngas and power generation from date palm waste steam gasification
Abstract:
This study uses the Aspen Plus program to simulate the gasification process of biomass conversion into energy. Aspen Plus is an extremely potent simulation tool that was utilized in this instance to assess the feasibility of utilizing a particular waste as biomass and forecast the outcomes of integration in a power generation system.
Date palm waste was selected as the feedstock to be used as the main source of energy (DPW). The Middle East has an abundance of it. The two components of this effort are the creation of syngas from date palm trash through steam gasification and the production of electricity from the syngas. Using the assumption that the material had been dried, the literature provided the physical and chemical analysis of DPW. Based on Gibb's free energy minimization, all processes were shown to have reached thermodynamic equilibrium. Steam is preferable for enriching hydrogen because it increases the water gas shift process; nonetheless, it is more expensive than air for this study work's gasification. The model primarily comprises of a gasifier that uses steam to gasify waste paper and produce hydrogen-rich syngas. Following compression, it is burned in a combustion chamber and fed into a gas turbine to produce energy. In order to heat input water, create steam, and subsequently provide power for the turbine, the system also has a steam turbine that recovers waste heat from processes in the gasifier and gas turbine. Upon acquiring the model, multiple analyses were conducted to acquire the desired outcomes. The effects of the steam/biomass ratio and the gasification temperature on the volume composition and LHV were investigated in order to assess the quality of syngas.
According to the data, H2 contributes the most molarity (37%). The temperature at which gasification occurs causes a modest drop in H2 content, a rise in CO content, and a decrease in CO2. Between 650ºC and 900ºC, the resulting syngas's LHV ranged between 5,55 MJ/m3 and 5,65 MJ/m3. The data also demonstrate that the H2, CO2, and CO contents, together with the LHV, decrease with an increase in the steam/biomass ratio. In terms of power generation, a feedstock of 1000 kg/h of DPW produced about 2,3 MW using the simulation settings selected. Eighty-three percent of this power was created by the gas turbine, with the remaining power coming from the steam turbine using the recovered heat. The impact of various factors, including the air flowrate, compression ratio, and steam/biomass ratio, on the final product was also investigated. The findings show that as the steam/biomass ratio rises, more power is produced because of the increased flowrate of the combusted gases and the increased compression ratio. Ultimately, it was found that larger air flowrates result in richer combustion and higher mass flowrates of the gas products, both of which increase power output. Following a very basic economic analysis, the cost of producing one kWh of electricity was 0,0969 €.
