A statistical analysis on tar reduction in producer gas for IC engine application

ABSTRACT

The automobile sector attained a boom in the last decade; this made the necessity for more fuel consumption. To meet the demand, many alternate fuel systems are introduced. Among that, producer gas blend carbonated fuels are highly recommended. Since, it is adaptive to the current internal combustion engines with modified carburetor. This paper aims to investigate the production of producer gas from wood and the methods to filter the tar content in it. The chemical-catalytic method is the cost- and eco-effective way to reduce the tar in producer gas. Therefore, a new Ni-based TiO₂-supported catalysts are synthesised to improve the efficiency of the tar cracking. The catalytic system is affected by other factors such as bed temperature, catalyst weight, gas feed rate and gas residence time (GRT). The design of experiments is framed with L₂₇ design table and the response is optimised using the Taguchi methodology. The derived regression equation attained 98.4% of adequacy in response prediction and the identified optimaltar cracking efficiency is 99.46% for Ni-Pr/TiO₂ catalyst.

KEYWORDS:

• Producer gas
• IC engine
• catalyst weight
• gas feed rate

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.