Colloquia

Summary

Current trends towards renewable energy give future prospects for the production of bio-fuels. Gasification of biomass is one of these methods which stands at the basis of bio-fuel production. The gasification process enables conversion of carbonaceous material into synthetic gas (syngas), mainly consisting of hydrogen (H2) and carbon monoxide (CO). Focus in this research is on a biomass gasification installation combined with a bio-methanol synthesis unit.

In this work, a framework is constructed for auxiliary equipment design, including a carbon dioxide (CO2) liquefier, oxygen (O2) production unit, cooling tower and biomass dryer. Additionally, integration of the auxiliary equipment with the gasification installation is discussed to obtain a thermally and economically efficient installation. A techno-economic analysis is performed to determine the impact  of proposed integration solutions as well as the effect of feedstock type and installation production scale on the  techno-economic feasibility.

The integration of waste process heat with a feedstock dryer was found to significantly improve the feasibility of the gasification installation. Furthermore, a comparison between feedstocks favoured Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) as most favourable fuel, followed by pinewood and sewage sludge respectively. Finally, it was shown how increasing the installation production scale significantly improves the business case.