A Kinetic Study of Steam Gasification of Woodchip, Sawdust and Lignite

Biomass and low-grade coals are known to be better potential sources of energy compared to crude oil and natural gas since these materials are readily available and found to have large reserves, respectively. Gasification of these carbonaceous materials produced syngas for chemical synthesis and power generation. Woodchip, sawdust and lignite were gasified with steam in a thermobalance reactor under atmospheric pressure in order to evaluate their kinetic rate information. The effects of gasification temperature (600~900 o C) and partial pressure of steam (20~90 kPa) on the gas- ification rate were investigated. The three different types of gas-solid reaction models were applied to the experimental data to predict the behavior of the gasification reactions. The modified volumetric model predicted the conversion data well, thus the model was used to evaluate kinetic parameters in this study. The observed activation energy of biomass, sawdust and lignite gasification reactions were found to be in reasonable range and their rank was found to be sawdust > woodchip > lignite. The expression of apparent reaction rates for steam gasification of the three solids was proposed to provide basic information on the design of coal gasification processes.