Coal and biomass pyrolysis and gasification has gained importance in the last few decades for synthetic fuel synthesis, which is a promising solution to the current energy crisis. Efficient fuel feed is necessary to the coal and biomass utilization processes. Common gasification systems employ large-scale slurry feeders to inject the fuel into the gasifier vessel. The presence of excess water i...

One of the promising avenues for biomass processing is the use of water as a reaction medium for wet or aquatic biomass. This review focuses on the hydrothermal catalytic production of fuels and chemicals from aquatic biomass. Two different regimes for conversion of aquatic biomass in hydrothermal conditions are discussed in detail. The first is hydrothermal liquefaction, and the second is hydr...

Air-blown gasification of biomass in fluidized bed reactors produces relatively low concentrations of hydrogen. The combination of a catalyst and calcium-based sorbent is being developed to increase the efficiency of converting producer gas from biomass gasification into hydrogen. The conversion process entails reforming the methane and tar, and converting carbon monoxide into hydrogen by the w...

The optimal design of an energy polygeneration system that converts coal and biomass to electricity, liquid fuels (naphtha and diesel) and chemical products (methanol) with CO2 capture under different economic scenarios is investigated. In this system, syngas is produced by gasification of coal and/or biomass; purified by a cleaning process to remove particles, mercury, sulfur and carbon dioxid...

Gasification of biomass ultimately generates at least one solid byproduct in which the inorganic constituents of the biomass are concentrated. Given the potential for utilization, or issues with disposal, facile methods are needed for determining the compositions of the fly ashes from recently-available gasifier-based bioenergy systems. Proton induced x-ray emission spectroscopy (PIXE) and indu...

Introduction The goal of this project is to develop models that predict accurately coal and biomass gasification and combustion behaviors in the type of environments likely to be established in advanced energy systems. This requires acquiring the information needed to understand and characterize the fundamental chemical and physical processes that govern coal and biomass conversion at high temp...

Biomass, mainly in the form of wood, is the oldest form of energy used by humans. Gasification is a process of conversion of solid carbonaceous fuel into combustible gas by partial combustion. In the present study, a model developed by us in our earlier study is used for predicting the steady-state composition and rate of reaction profiles for the reduction zone of the downdraft biomass gasifie...

The potential of algal biomass as a source of liquid and gaseous biofuels is a highly topical theme, but as yet there is no successful economically viable commercial system producing biofuel. However, the majority of the research has focused on producing fuels from microalgae rather than from macroalgae. This article briefly reviews the methods by which useful energy may be extracted from macro...

Seasonal time of switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) harvest affects yield and biofuel quality and balancing these two components may vary depending on conversion system. A field study compared fall and spring harvest measuring biomass yield, element concentration, carbohydrate characterization, and total synthetic gas production as indicators of biofuel quality for direct combustion, ethanol pro...

The devolatilization process and the moisture content in coal and biomass play an important role on the gasification performance of these fuels. To theoretically understand the complex chemical processes in a gasifier, we developed a multiphysics model to simulate the gasification processes in a well-stirred reactor. This model is a first-of-its-kind: it considers detailed gas-phase chemistry, ...