Energies 2009, 2, 258-268; doi:10.3390/en20200258
energies
ISSN 1996-1073
www.mdpi.com/journal/energies
Article
Air Gasification of Agricultural Waste in a Fluidized Bed Gasifier:
Hydrogen Production Performance
W. A. Wan Ab Karim Ghani 1,*, Reza Alipour Moghadam 1, M. A. Mohd Salleh 1 and
A. B. Alias 2
1 Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia; E-Mails:
moghadam.reza@yahoo.com; asalleh@eng.upm.edu.my
2 Chemical Engineering, Universiti Teknologi MARA Malaysia, 54500 Shah Alam, Selangor,
Malaysia
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; E-Mail: wanaz@eng.upm.edu.my; Tel.: +603-
89466287; Fax: +603-86567120
Received: 17 April 2009; in revised form: 11 May 2009 / Accepted: 12 May 2009 /
Published: 19 May 2009
Abstract: Recently, hydrogen production from biomass has become an attractive
technology for power generation. The main objective pursued in this work is to investigate
the hydrogen production potential from agricultural wastes (coconut coir and palm kernel
shell) by applying the air gasification technique. An experimental study was conducted
using a bench-scale fluidized bed gasifier with 60 mm diameter and 425 mm height.
During the experiments, the fuel properties and the effects of operating parameters such as
gasification temperatures (700 to 900°C), fluidization ratio (2 to 3.33 m/s), static bed
height (10 to 30 mm) and equivalence ratio (0.16 to 0.46) were studied. It was concluded
that substantial amounts of hydrogen gas (up to 67 mol%) could be produced utilizing
agricultural residues such as coconut and palm kernel shell by applying this fluidization
technique. For both samples, the rise of temperature till 900°C favored further hydrocarbon
reactions and allowed an increase of almost 67 mol% in the release of hydrogen. However,
other parameters such as fluidizing velocity and feed load showed only minor effects on
hydrogen yield. In conclusion, agricultural waste can be assumed as an alternative
renewable energy source to the fossil fuels, and the environmental pollution originating
from the disposal of agricultural residues can be partially reduced.
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