Improvement of gas yield from biomass gasification by using Fe-olivine as gasifier bed inventory

A bench-scale biomass gasification plant operating at 1 atm was used to check innovative, catalytic hot gas cleaning processes and plant arrangements. The cleaning step is realized by means of Fe-olivine used as a catalytic bed inventory for tar, methane, and H 2S reforming. Tests performed by using Fe-olivine particles as the reactor fluidized bed inventory demonstrated that they are more active than olivine particles. The Fe-olivine particles were still active even when they have been stressed for many hours under a vigorous fluidization state at high temperature. The use of Fe as the active catalytic element did not pose any environmental risk. The use of Ni grains contained into a ceramic candle assures almost complete elimination of tar compounds in the product gas and prevents char particles to be elutriated from the gasifier. This is an abstract of a paper presented at the 7th European Congress of Chemical Engineering-7 and the 19th International Congress of Chemical and Process Engineering CHISA (Prague, Czech Republic 8/28/2010-9/1/2010).