Kinetic-compartmental modelling of potassium-containing cellulose feedstock gasification

Abstract

Biomass is of growing interest as a secondary energy source and can be converted to fuels with higher energy density especially by pyrolysis or gasification. Understanding the mechanism and the kinetics of biomass pyrolysis (thermal decomposition) and gasification (conversion of organic material to gases) could be the key to the design of industrial devices capable of processing vast amounts of biomass feedstock. In our work real product components obtained in pyrolysis were took into consideration as well as char and oil as lumped components, and the kinetic constants for a biomass model compound (cellulose) pyrolysis and gasification were identified based on a proposed simplified reaction mechanism within a compartment model structure. A laboratory scale reactor was used for the physical experiments containing consecutive fast pyrolysis and gasification stages using alkali metal (K) containing feedstock, which has a significant effect on the cellulose pyrolysis and gasification. The detailed model was implemented in MATLAB/Simulink environment, and the unknown kinetic parameters were identified based on experimental data. The model was validated based on measurement data, and a good agreement was found. Based on the validated first principle model the optimal parameters were determined as 0.15 mL/min steam flow rate, and 4% K content.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

biomass pyrolysis / kinetic parameter identification / compartment modelling / optimisation

References

[1] Bridgwater A V. Review of fast pyrolysis of biomass and product upgrading. Biomass and Bioenergy, 2012, 38: 68–94

[2] Carrol A, Somerville C. Cellulosic biofuels. Annual Review of Plant Biology, 2009, 60(1): 165–182

[3] Suzdalenko V, Barmina I, Lickrastina A, Zake M. The effect of co-gasification of the biomass pellets with gas on the thermal degradation of biomass. Chemical Engineering Transactions, 2011, 24: 7–12

[4] Sun L, Xu B, Smith R. Power and chemical production analysis based on biomass gasification processes. Chemical Engineering Transactions, 2014, 38: 61–66

[5] Yang H, Yan R, Chen H, Lee D H, Zheng C. Characteristics of hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin pyrolysis. Fuel, 2017, 86(12-13): 1781–1788

[6] Panepinto D, Genon G. Solid waste and biomass gasification: Fundamental processes and numerical simulation. Mathematical modelling. Chemical Engineering Transactions, 2011, 24: 25–30

[7] Wang S, Lin H, Ru B, Dai G, Wang X, Xiao G, Luo Z. Kinetic modeling of biomass components pyrolysis using a sequential and coupling method. Fuel, 2016, 185: 763–771

[8] Lin Y, Cho J, Tompsett G, Westmoreland P R, Huber G W. Kinetics and mechanism of cellulose pyrolysis. Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 2009, 113(46): 20097–20107

[9] Shen D, Xiao R, Gu S, Zhang H. The overview of thermal decomposition of cellulose in lignocellulosic biomass. Cellulose-Biomass Conversion, 2013, 193–226

[10] Olsson J G, Pettersson J B, Padban N, Bjerle I. Alkali metal emission from filter ash and fluidized bed material from PFB gasification of biomass. Energy & Fuels, 1998, 12(3): 626–630

[11] Cao W, Li J, Lue L, Zhang X. Release of alkali metals during biomass thermal conversion. Archives of Industrial Biotechnology, 2017, 1: 1–3

[12] Wang S, Liu Q, Liao Y, Luo Z, Cen K. A study on the mechanism research on cellulose pyrolysis under catalysis of metallic salts. Korean Journal of Chemical Engineering, 2007, 24(2): 336–340

[13] Koven A B, Tong S S, Farnood R R, Jia C Q. Alkali-thermal gasification and hydrogen generation potential of biomass. Frontiers of Chemical Science and Engineering, 2017, 11(3): 369–378

[14] Guan Y, Pei A, Guo L. Hydrogen production by catalytic gasification of cellulose in supercritical water. Frontiers of Chemical Engineering in China, 2008, 2(2): 176–180

[15] Patwardhan P R, Satrio J A, Brown R C, Shanks B H. Influence of inorganic salts on the primary pyrolysis products of cellulose. Bioresource Technology, 2010, 101(12): 4646–4655

[16] Lobo L S, Carabineiro S A C. Kinetics and mechanism of catalytic carbon gasification. Fuel, 2016, 183: 457–469

[17] Kaushal P, Tyagi R. Advanced simulation of biomass gasification in a fluidized bed reactor using Aspen plus. Renewable Energy, 2017, 101: 629–636

[18] Lédé J. Cellulose pyrolysis kinetics: An historical review on the existence and role of intermediate active cellulose. Journal of Analytical and Applied Pyrolysis, 2012, 94: 17–32

[19] Richter F, Rein G. Pyrolysis kinetics and multi-objective inverse modelling of cellulose at the microscale. Fire Safety Journal, 2017, 91: 191–199

[20] Antal M J, Várhegyi G, Jakab E. Cellulose pyrolysis kinetics: Revisited. Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, 1998, 37(4): 1267–1275

[21] Goyal H, Pepiot P. A compact kinetic model for biomass pyrolysis at gasification conditions. Energy & Fuels, 2017, 31(11): 12120–12132

[22] Halama S, Spliethoff H. Numerical simulation of entrained flow gasification: Reaction kinetics and char structure evolution. Fuel Processing Technology, 2015, 138: 314–324

[23] Xiong Q, Aramideh S, Passalacqua A, Kong S C. BIOTC: An open-source CFD code for simulating biomass fast pyrolysis. Computer Physics Communications, 2014, 185(6): 1739–1746

[24] Fogarasi S, Egedy A, Imre-Lucaci F, Varga T, Chován T. Hybrid CFD-compartment approach for modelling and optimisation of a leaching reactor. Computer-Aided Chemical Engineering, 2014, 33: 1255–1260

[25] Egedy A, Varga T, Chován T. Compartment model structure identification with qualitative methods for a stirred vessel. Mathematical and Computer Modelling of Dynamical Systems, 2013, 19(2): 115–132

[26] Zou J, Yang H, Zeng Z, Wu C, Williams P T, Chen H. Hydrogen production from pyrolysis catalytic reforming of cellulose in the presence of K alkali metal. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 2016, 41(25): 10598–10607

[27] Yan L, Lim C J, Yue G, He B, Grace J R. Simulation of biomass-steam gasification in fluidized bed reactors: Model setup, comparisons and preliminary predictions. Bioresource Technology, 2016, 221: 625–635

[28] Digabel S L. Algorithm 909: NOMAD: Nonlinear optimization with the MADS algorithm. ACM Transactions on Mathematical Software, 2011, 37(4): 44

[29] Audet C, Dennis J E Jr. Mesh adaptive direct search algorithms for constrained optimization. SIAM Journal on Optimization, 2006, 17(1): 188–217

[30] Smith B R J, Loganathan M, Shanta M S. A review of the water gas shift reaction kinetics. International Journal of Chemical Reactor Engineering, 2010, 8: 1–32

[31] Eri Q, Zhao X, Raganathan P, Gu S. Numerical simulations on the effect of potassium on the biomass fast pyrolysis in fluidized bed reactor. Fuel, 2017, 197: 290–297

[32] Trendewicz A, Evans R, Dutta A, Sykes R, Carpenter D, Braun R. Evaluating the effect of potassium on cellulose pyrolysis reaction kinetics. Biomass and Bioenergy, 2015, 74: 15–25

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature