Groundnut shell gasification performance in a fluidized bed gasifier with bubbling air as gasification medium

ABSTRACT

This work was focused on finding the groundnut shell (GNS) gasification performance in a fluidized bed gasifier with bubbling air as gasification medium. GNS in powder form (a mixture of different particle size as given in table 8 in the article) was gasified using naturally available river sand as bed material, top of the bed feeding, conventional charcoal as bed heating medium, and two cyclones for proper cleaning and cooling the product gas. Experiments were performed using different operating conditions such as equivalence ratio (ER) between 0.29 and 0.33, bed temperature between 650°C and 800°C, and feedstock feeding rate between 36 and 31.7 kg/h. Different parameters were evaluated to study the gasifier performance such as gas yield, cold gas efficiency, carbon conversion efficiency (CCE), and high heating value. The most suitable ER value was found to be 0.31, giving the most stable bed temperature profile at 714.4°C with 5–10% fluctuation. Cold gas efficiency and CCE at optimal ER of 0.31 was found to be 71.8% and 91%, respectively.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Bubbling fluidized bed gasifier
• groundnut shell powder
• equivalence ratio
• conventional charcoal
• carbon conversion efficiency

Acknowledgement

The authors thank Sardar Patel Renewable Energy Research Institute, V V Nagar, Anand, Gujarat, India, for making us avail their gasifier facility.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Dharminder Singh http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2451-3081