Flowsheet Development and Modelling of Hydrogen Production from Empty Fruit Bunch via Steam Gasification

• Main Authors: Inayat, Abrar, Ahmad, Murni M, Abdul Mutalib, M I, Yusup, Suzana
• Format: Article
• Published: AIDIC 2010
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://eprints.utp.edu.my/2739/1/466E2E8Bd01.pdf; http://www.aidic.it/cet/index.html; http://eprints.utp.edu.my/2739/

Due to the availability of agricultural land and significant production of palm oil in Malaysia, there is abundance of biomass in the form of agricultural wastes. This work reports a mathematical model for the flowsheet developed for hydrogen production from empty fruit bunch from oil palm via steam gasification with in-situ carbon dioxide capture by CaO as sorbent. The flowsheet model incorporates the chemical reaction kinetics, mass and energy balances calculations. Parameter analysis on the influence of the temperature, steam/biomass and sorbent/biomass ratios are performed. It is predicted that more than 70 mole% hydrogen can be produced at 1150 K. In addition, CO2 are predicted to be fully absorbed from the system at sorbent/biomass ratio of 2.0. It is observed that the thermodynamic efficiency of the gasifier increases with temperature reaching a maximum efficiency of 84% at steam/biomass ratio of 2.0. It is shown that by using CaO as the sorbent in the gasifier, the efficiency can be increased by 10% compared to the conventional gasification method.