Design and performance evaluation of a novel biomass feeding system

A novel feeding system has been designed and fabricated in order to provide an uniform and continuous flow of low bulk density biomass in a circulating fluidized bed (CFB) unit. The novel feeding system removes the difficulties associated with the various existing biomass feeding system such as bridge formation in the feeder and chocking. In the novel design, a hollow pipe with holes at its surface has been installed at the core of the hopper to provide the aeration effect. The experiments were carried out at four different inventories of 250, 500, 750 and 1000 gm and at three different sawdust particle sizes of mean diameter 732, 853 and 921 µm. Results of the experiment show that, the developed feeding system is suitable for supplying biomass without chocking to a CFB reactor to generate power for more than 5 kW-hr.