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

• Main Authors: Inayat, Abrar, Ahmad, Murni M, Abdul Mutalib, M I, Yusup, Suzana
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: TP Chemical technology
• Online Access: http://scholars.utp.edu.my/id/eprint/3048/1/Flowsheet_development_and_modelling_of_hydrogen_production_from_empty_fruit_bunch_%28EFB%29_via_steam_gasification_%28PRES_2010%29.pdf; http://scholars.utp.edu.my/id/eprint/3048/

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.