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Reaction kinetics in biomass gasification (chemical engineering)

Alkhathami, Hatem Musfer 2022. Reaction kinetics in biomass gasification (chemical engineering). PhD Thesis, Cardiff University.
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Abstract

This thesis is concerned with the catalytic fluid-bed gasification of agricultural residue from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The analysis contained herein examined the physical behaviour of this material in a lab-scale gasification reactor and the extrapolation of this behaviour to the potential use of a nation-wide initiative to deploy date crop residues for the generation of renewable energy. Fluidised bed gasification is an interesting concept for renewable energy due to the availability and sustainability of agricultural waste around the world. Fossil fuels remain a major player in the international energy market which leads to further challenges in deployment of renewable energy, especially across the Middle East, where fossil fuels dominate the energy market. The desert nature of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a driver for the government to cultivate the desert and to make use of agricultural waste as a source of energy. Due to the abundance of date palms in the Kingdom, the utilization of palm waste (date stone) as biomass has been studied within this thesis. Using a thermogravimetric analyser (TGA) the pyrolysis kinetics of date stone was studied. A variety of metal bearing catalysts (dolomite, olive, limestone) were tested in the fluidised bed reactor under similar conditions to the TGA using the same percentage of catalyst (10%) to study the activation energy using the Coats Redfern method (results were 44.8, 95.12, 76.19 kJ/mol respectively),. Experiments were conducted for four samples of date stone with dolomite in the following proportions (0%, 5%, 10%, 15%) by using Coats Redfern method and the Activation Energy values were 73.84, 64.94, 44.89, and 50.93kJ/mol respectively. To study the impact of different ratio of catalyst on gasification performance, gasification experiments were performed on “as received date stone” in a noval lab-scale gasification fluidised bed. The effect of equivalence ratio (0.15-0.35) and bed temperature (450-650°C) on gasification performance was investigated. Based on thermogravimetric measurements using a mass balance model, the activation energy of date stone was found to be 84 kJ/mole. Using a case study in the Riyadh region of Saudi Arabia, the use of biomass from date palm was investigated. It was demonstrated that this material may provide a feasible sustainable energy supply in Saudi Arabia. The total quantity of potential biomass generated from the residues of date palm in the Riyadh region to produce energy would be 865 x 106 tonnes per year. The overall potential to recover energy from the residues of date palm was forecasted to be 15.63 PJ per year.

Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
Date Type: Completion
Status: Unpublished
Schools: Engineering
Uncontrolled Keywords: Fluidised bed gasification, TGA, Date stone Gasification, Dolomite , Renewable energy, Economic feasibility.
Date of First Compliant Deposit: 18 February 2022
Last Modified: 18 Feb 2022 14:31
URI: https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/147614

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