Generation of Hydrogen-Rich Syngas through Gasification of Fuel Cane Bagasse in a Downdraft Gasifier

Gasification of biomass for the production of electricity using small scale downdraft gasifier plants is an important route in the development of distributed generation systems matching the distributed nature of biomass availability. By coupling these reactors with high temperature fuel cells, this offers the best opportunity for optimising energy production by high efficiency conversion of low calorific value feedstock. Although high temperature fuel cells are thermally compatible with downdraft gasifiers and are relatively insensitive to micro-contaminants higher efficiencies of conversion of syngas to electricity can be obtained with increased hydrogen content in the syngas. Syngas composition is dependent on a wide range of factors including feedstock composition, gasifying agent, biomass moisture content and gasifier operating conditions. In this study the potential for the production of hydrogen-rich syngas from gasification of fuel cane bagasse in a 50 kWe capacity downdraft gasifier was investigated, increased concentration of hydrogen was observed by varying several parameters. This gasifier has been scaled up to 1 MWe and 1.7 MWe units and the operating data has shown that the performance of both systems is very similar to that of the original small scale (50 kWe) gasifier. The performance of the 50 kWe biomass gasifier was evaluated in terms of equivalence ratio, syngas composition and cold gas efficiency.