Simulation of Hydrogen Production from Biomass Catalytic Gasification

In this study, biomass catalytic gasification process for producing H₂-rich gas was presented. The process consists of mainly two fluidized beds-a gasifier and a CaO regenerator. The objective of this research is to develop a computer model of biomass catalytic gasification. A model was developed using Aspen Plus software. The model predicted gas composition and hydrogen yield in good agreement with experimental data. In the case of CaCO₃ catalysis, the effects of operating parameters, including gasification temperature, steam to biomass ratio and CaCO₃ addition on product gas composition, and hydrogen yield were analyzed. The results showed the use of CaCO₃ has the potential to enhance the hydrogen content, and the suitable gasification temperature is at 650-700°C in this catalytic reaction. Furthermore, the hydrogen yield can reach 77.48g/kg biomass, and the highest hydrogen concentration can reach more than 70% (mol) at the optimal conditions.

I. Introduction

With the increasing depletion of fossil fuels in the world, the need for renewable alternatives is becoming more urgent. Biomass is an ideal renewable and clean energy with advantages of abundance resources and neutral in greenhouse gas circulation. Among the ways of biomass utilization, Hydrogen production from biomass gasification technology attracted interests of researchers and has been developing. Hydrogen is expected to be the most important energy carrier in the future. Researches have done a lot of work regard to improve the production of H₂-rich gas from Gasification process. Gil et al. [1] studied three types of gasification agent (air, steam, steam and air) in the bubble fluidized bed, the results show that: steam gasification can obtain gas with a relatively higher H₂ content.