Development of a Simple Gasifier for Utilization of Biomass in Rural Areas for Transportation and Electricity Generation

The development of a simple low-cost gasifier is described with a focus to extract wood gas also called syngas by burning waste biomass in rural areas. In many rural areas of India, wood (biomass) is used for cooking and other purposes. If this could be efficiently burnt by pyrolysis in a gasifier, the gases could be separated and stored in cylinders for further utilization such as cooking, running automobiles and electricity generation. The experimental setup consists of a typical gasifier utilizing the process of pyrolysis for the burning of biomass in the absence of air. The pyrolyzing gases are pumped out of the system through appropriate processes such as drying, pyrolyzing, reduction and combustion to obtain a tar-free syngas. The obtained syngas mostly consists of CO and H2 in addition to small amounts of methane and CO2. In the initial experiments, ejector pump locally developed has been used to pump out the gases for burning outside the system. A four-stroke petrol engine could be run by directly connecting the gas outlet to the carburetor with proper modification. The gas outlet is connected to a compressor to fill into cylinders for further application in cooking and petrol engines. While the gas is pumped out, about 40% of the biomass is left behind as biochar. This could be used for many applications such as farming, medicine, smoke-free fuel and others.