SIMULATION OF AIR‐GASIFICATION OF WOOD WASTES USING ASPEN PLUS

Abstract

A thermodynamic equilibrium model for air‐gasification of wood wastes in fixed-bed downdraft gasifier was developed using Aspen (Advanced System for Process Engineering) Plus based on minimisation of Gibbs free energy. The synthesis gas (syngas) composition predicted by the model was found to be in fair agreement with measured syngas composition from experiments with similar gasifier type and biomass. The validated model was used to carry out sensitivity analysis to study the effect of gasifier temperatures, air-fuel ratios and wood waste moisture levels on syngas quality (composition and energy content). The various parameters investigated were observed to affect the syngas quality significantly.

Keywords

• Biomass
• equilibrium model
• gasification
• syngas
• wood wastes

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