SIMULATION OF O₂-BLOWN CO-GASIFICATION OF WOOD CHIP AND POTATO PEEL FOR PRODUCING SYNGAS

Highlights

● Low-value biowaste including wood chip and potato peel was valorized to syngas.

● O₂-blown co-gasification of wood chip and potato peel was simulated.

● Different reaction conditions on CCE, gas composition, and LHV were studied.

● Positive interaction between wood chip and potato peel in co-gasification was found.

Abstract

Potato is the fifth largest agricultural crop in Canada and contributes to the generation of an abundant amount of potato peel. However, disposal/recycling this peel remains a challenge due to the stringent environmental regulations. Consequently, there is a lack of an appropriate recycling and valorization methods of potato peel. Gasification is an effective technology for producing syngas and an ecofriendly waste disposal approach. Syngas is an important industrial intermediate to produce synthetic fuels and chemicals. To develop an ecofriendly and cost-effective valorization approach for potato peel, this study used a mixture of woody biomass (i.e., wood chips) and potato peel to produce syngas by co-gasification using O₂ as the gasifying agent at a constant equivalence ratio of 0.3 using Aspen Plus simulation software. The influences of gasification temperature and wood chip/potato peel weight ratio on the carbon conversion efficiency (CCE), and product gas composition (molar fraction) and lower heating value (LHV) of product gas were investigated. This simulation indicated that a positive synergistic interaction occurs between wood chips and potato peel in co-gasification process in terms of an increase in CCE by comparing the arithmetic value and real value at all simulated wood chip to potato peel weight ratios (44.9% to 85.8%, 46.5% to 76.2%, and 48.1% to 78.6% at ratios of 25:75, 50:50, and 75:25, respectively, for wood chips to potato peel). While the molar fraction of H₂ and CO decreased continuously with increase in the weight percentage of wood chips in the wood chip-potato peel mixture from 0 wt% to 100 wt% (H_2, at 42.1 mol% to 41.4 mol%; and CO at 44.0 mol% to 40.4 mol%), accompanied by a decrease of the LHV of the product gas (10.3 to 9.78 MJ·Nm⁻³). The study concluded that co-gasification for producing syngas is feasible and environmental-friendly option to recycle and valorize potato peel.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

Aspen Plus / co-gasification / potato peel / syngas / simulation / waste reduction / wood chip

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge funding provided through the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery grant and as the University of Prince Edward Island start up award to Yulin Hu.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Yulin Hu, Kang Kang, Iker Zulbaran Alvarez, Nasim Mia, and Aadesh Rakhra declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2023. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)