[Gasification] the most important thing (quite possibly) i'velearned to date

Mark Ludlow mark at ludlow.com
Mon Oct 18 02:48:58 CDT 2010


Hi Kevin!

Second Law! Energy is not "created" by the reaction. It already exists in
the individual components of the reaction.

Kevin, you can answer your own question. The only excess "free" energy is
that which is expressed as sensible and latent thermal energy of the gaseous
output (however: we cool gases for greater volumetric efficiency in UC
engines, etc.). Even tars require energy for "cracking" (that's why
catalysts are important). Look at the Gibbs Free Energy of the fuel infeed
and you can compute the theoretical, 100% efficient (read:impossible!)
output. One may wish to alter the composition of the output gas, but it
ain't free, baby! Otherwise I would be filling the petrol tank on my
double-engined Hummer with quadruple A/C with my garden hose!

Yah!

Mark

 

From: gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org
[mailto:gasification-bounces at lists.bioenergylists.org] On Behalf Of Kevin
Sent: Sunday, October 17, 2010 10:43 PM
To: Discussion of biomass pyrolysis and gasification;
gasification at bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: [Gasification] the most important thing (quite possibly)
i'velearned to date

 

Dear Jim

 

Interesting thoughts!

 

What are your thoughts on the optimum moisture content of biomass feed to a
gasifier? On the one hand, with low fuel moisture content, there is a low
endothermic load on teh reaction. On the other hand, a high moisture content
could yield greater hydrogen content in the output gas.

 

To take things to the limit, what are your thoughts on feeding a gasifier
with torrified wood?

 

Thanks!

 

Kevin 

----- Original Message ----- 

From: jim mason <mailto:jim at allpowerlabs.org>  

To: gasification at bioenergylists.org 

Sent: Monday, October 18, 2010 2:08 AM

Subject: [Gasification] the most important thing (quite possibly)
i'velearned to date

 



there are many variables to move around in a gasifier, and all of them are
important. but once the basics are in order, i'm coming to the conclusion
that
the most impactful thing one can do/add/fix to the basic imbert design is to
use 
the ic engine exhaust to heat the incoming fuel.

no, i don't have any numbers on this yet (we hope to get these soon), but
the
anecdotal experiences keep piling up. the biggest flexibility gains i'm
finding
both in poor fuel shape/size and moisture tolerance, as well as gas turndown
ratio, 
are from the ic exhaust heat exchanger. on our rig, this is called the
pyrocoil. other
rigs call this something else.

this is not terribly surprising. the ic exhaust is the biggest waste heat
source we have around a gasifier. in principle, the ic exhaust has about
about
3x or 4x the heat available as the outgoing syngas. the incoming fuel
similarly
has much more heating capacity than the incoming air (the multiple i forget
at
the moment, but i do know the incoming air can only take up about 1/2 of the
heat available in the outgoing syngas).

also, the ic exhaust is much hotter than the outgoing syngas after
preheating
the incoming air. thus you can use the ic exhaust to do much more than dry
the
fuel. you can it to drive the fuel through pyrolysis, and really, get it up
to
about 4-500c before it falls into the hearth proper. this is a big
difference
from the typical situation of still moist fuel falling into the hearth.

not only can you use the ic exhaust to add a very significant amount of heat
to
the system, you can also use it to change the character of pyrolysis in the
reactor. a typical downdraft has very high temp short residence time
pyrolysis
right on top of the nozzles. this high temp pyrolysis optimizes the creation
of
teritary tars, or refractory tars, which are difficult to crack again (given
lots of double carbon bonds). if you externally drive pyrolysis at lower
temp
over longer time, you get more primary and secondary tars, which are easier
to
crack downstream (fewer double carbon bonds). this seems to allow hearth
conditions to be less perfect and still get good gas out.

using ic exhaust to heat incoming fuel is not a complete get out of jail
free
card. but to me it seems the most impactful new thing one can do on these
rigs.
it seems to have more of an impact than any other single thing we've done to
date on the gek.

yes, all of it is important, and all of it should be tended to, but the
above is
my current vote for the biggest bang for the effort. hopefully we can get
some
proper numbers on this soon (and prove or disprove the above conjecture).

jim






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