SYN-GAS PRODUCTION BY BFB GASIFICATION: EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF DIFFERENT FEEDSTOCKS

The Gasification process is considered one of the most promising and efficient techniques to hydrogen production from biomass as carbon neutral emitter. Aim of the work was to exploit the potential of residual biomass, as citrus residues (from orange fruits industries) and Posidonia Oceanica (Mediterranean sea plant), those are different of traditional woody biomasses. Gasification experiments were performed in a bubbling fluidized bed reactor at 1023 K, 1 bar, ER=0.3, and various steam to biomass inlet ratio (0.5<S/B<1.0) in order to investigate the influence of these parameters on syngas composition and hydrogen yield. Experimental results highlighted an improvement of the gasification performances in terms of syngas and H2 production with increasing of Steam to Biomass (S/B) inlet ratio (2.1 to 2.63 Nm3/kgbiomass and 0.25 to 0.65 Nm3/kgbiomass respectively) than gasification tests performed with only air (1.91 to 2.27 Nm3/kgbiomass and 0.17 to 0.20 Nm3/kgbiomass respectively). In particular, Posidonia Oceanica showed the best rates both of syngas and of hydrogen yields (2.63 Nm3/kgbiomass and 0.65 Nm3/kgbiomass, respectively).