Coffee Cut-Stems (CCS) are an abundant wood waste in Colombia obtained generally from crops renovation. However these residues are used directly in combustion processes for heating and cooking in coffee farms where their energy efficiency is very low. In the present work, an energy and environmental assessments for two energy production processes (ethanol fermentation and gasification) using CC...

A model for pressurised steam/O2-blown fluidised-bed gasification of biomass with catalytic reforming of hydrocarbons and tars was developed using Aspen Plus simulation software. Seven main blocks were used to model the fluidised-bed gasifier and two for the catalytic reformer. Modelling blocks were complemented with FORTRAN subroutines to simulate the observed non-equilibrium behaviour of the ...

Large amounts of ash, generated from biomass gasification, often contaminate syngas and the ecosystem. This study showed that the ash obtained from the gasification of pine wood was primarily composed of carbon (15% to 25%), minerals (~21%), and oxygen (52% to 63%), and exhibited low surface area (8.4 to 11.2 m/g). The size of ash particles was between 600 nm and 600 μm. Calcium, potassium, and...

An efficient way for producing power, heat, and cooling while reducing CO2 emissions is through trigeneration. The emitted CO2 from trigeneration plant can be further reduced by producing biochar, which contributes negative carbon footprint to the system through sequestration of biomass carbon as char. This requires a gasification process to be added in the trigeneration system to produce bioch...

The paper reports on a current research on fluidised bed gasification of biomass and coals. The focus is on the bed material agglomeration and fragmentation phenomena that are well known to affect the reliability and the efficiency of fluidized bed combustion processes. Preliminary results of dedicated tests at high temperature are reported and discussed in the paper. On the whole, agglomeratio...

Biomass, as a renewable source of energy, can be used in many industries to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels. However, due to the significantly high and varied moisture content of biomass, its use has several drawbacks, such as low total efficiency and process instability. Drying biomass before combustion or gasification can eliminate these drawbacks. Besides these benefits, there ar...