Gasification behavior of coal and woody biomass: Validation and parametrical study

The entrained flow gasification of two feedstocks (Kentucky coal and woody biomass) have been investigated in this study both numerically and experimentally. Previously, there had been no study that investigated the centerline parameters during the experimental gasification of Kentucky coal and biomass utilizing drop tube reactor (DTR). These high quality centerline experiments provide enough data for high fidelity model development and used for an innovative gasifier design. This work investigates the gasification behavior of Kentucky coal and wood waste under different gasification parameters including equivalence ratio, pressure and temperature. The experimental study was conducted in the air-blown atmospheric DTR experimental facility at the Waste-2-Energy Laboratory at Masdar Institute. The measured centerline temperature, exit gas composition, and SEM images was obtained for model validation and to gain better insight into the gasification of the two different feedstock particles. The Lagrangian–Eulerian based numerical model predicted the experimental results reasonably. The effect of the fuel type on the gas composition along the centerline of the gasifier indicated that Kentucky coal attained higher gasification efficiency when compared to that of wood waste. Moreover, the gasification efficiency was most sensitive to the equivalence ratio.