Volcanic lava effect on citrus peel residues gasification in BFB

The exploitation of the biomass as renewable energy have resulted to be a significant solution for the growing trend of the worldwide energies market. In particular, many attentions have been addressed toward use/valorization of agro-industrial residues and waste in these last years. In Italy, every year the juice industries produce about 1 million tons of citrus peels, involving significant environmental problem related to disposal of solid wastes [1], Hence, the conversion of these by-products would represent a significant source of energy if it could be valorized by gasification technology. In this context, aim of this work was to investigate about the effect of volcanic lava as catalyst on citrus peel residues conversion into hydrogen rich syngas through air-steam gasification. In according to recently authors experiences [2,3] gasification experiments were carried out in a bubbling fluidized bed (BFB) reactor at 993 K, 1 bar and different steam to biomass inlet ratios (0.5<S/B<1.25 wt/wt). Experiments were performed with solid volcanic lava and silica send (traditional gasification bed material), therefore a comparison between gasification performances was carried out mainly in terms of outlet syngas composition and hydrogen yield.