Catalytic Effect of Fe2O3, MnO2 and MgO on the Gasification Reaction of Biomass Char

Biomass gasification is a well-known owing to its relevance to generation of sustainable energy to save the traditional coal fossil fuel consumption. The influence of gasification temperature (850–1050°C) on biomass char gasification were performed in Program reduction furnace (PRF) and in order to keep the reaction in the chemically controlled regime, the gasification temperature 900°C was selected to conduct the rest of experiments. Based on PRF studies, the catalytic effect of Fe2O3, MnO2 and MgO on the gasification reaction of biomass char (BC) was studied in TGA and the results showed considerable improvement in carbon conversion: Fe2O3-char > MnO2-char > MgO-char > raw biomass char. Therefore, Fe2O3 (with loadings of 1–7 wt%) was selected as the superior catalyst for further gasification studies; the highest reactivity was devoted to 5 wt% Fe2O3 loaded char. The data acquired for gasification rate of catalyzed char was fitted with several kinetic models, among which, random pore model was adopted as the best model. From the Arrhenius curve fitting results, the activation energy of 5 wt% Fe2O3 loaded char was obtained 249.8 kJ/mol which was 81.1 kJ/mol lower than that of un-catalyzed char.