Gasification of biomass in a circulating fluidized bed based calcium looping gasifier for hydrogen-enriched gas production: experimental studies

ABSTRACT

This paper presents experimental studies of circulating fluidized bed based calcium looping gasification (CFB-CLG) system for producing hydrogen-enriched gas from biomass. The merit of this system is that it captures carbon dioxide (CO₂) during the process using the inexpensive and easily available sorbent calcium oxide (CaO). The process also regenerates the sorbent internally and produces a relatively pure stream of CO₂. A laboratory scale calcium looping gasification system based on a circulating fluidized bed was developed and tested. Experiments conducted to gasify sawdust in the CFB-CLG system shows that it could produce a gas with 81% hydrogen and CO₂ as low as 5%. Exergy analysis of the calcium looping system is done and the efficiency is 78.77%.

KEYWORDS:

• Calcium looping
• biomass gasification
• hydrogen-enriched gas
• in-situ carbon dioxide capture

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada [grant number 400495].