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Modeling in Biomass Harvesting, Biomass Pyrolysis and Producer Gas Cleaning

Time: Thu 2019-11-28 10.00

Location: Kollegiesalen, Brinellv. 8, Stockholm (English)

Doctoral student: Ramiar Sadegh-Vaziri , Energiprocesser

Opponent: Professor Alessio Frassoldati, Polytechnic University of Milan

Supervisor: Universitetslektor Matthäus Bäbler, Energiprocesser

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Abstract

Biomass is a viable alternative in order to mitigate the environmental effectscaused by the aggressive use of fossil feedstock during the last century.This thesis builds around the idea of a biofuel production process that iscomprised of biomass production, biomass gasication, gas cleaning andfuel production. Biomass production includes microalgae synthesis followedby harvesting to supply microalgae to the gasication process. In the gasi-cation process, the prepared microalgae is dried, pyrolyzed and gasiedto obtain a producer gas containing syngas and impurities. The producergas is cleaned from the impurities and fed to a fuel production unit, e.g. amethanation process.This thesis investigates three distinct aspects related to this processscheme, namely the occulation of microalgae as part of harvesting, biomasspyrolysis as a part of gasication, and sulfur removal from the producer gasas a part of gas cleaning.The investigation of occulation focuses on secondary phenomena thataccompany the aggregation and breakup of the suspended particles, namelyrestructuring, decay of oc strength and settling. For the study of theconsidered phenomena, a population balance model is developed.Slow pyrolysis of biomass is studied on both the reactor scale and thepellet scale. A model for a rotary drum reactor, using principles of isoconversionalanalysis, is developed for the study of dierent biomass feedstock.The proposed model allows for deriving a preliminary reactor design withminimal experimental input data. A one-dimensional nite volume schemeis developed for the investigation of pyrolysis on the pellet scale. The proposedscheme accounts for convective and diusive heat and mass transfer,and is tested against analytical solutions and commercial software packages.Sulfur removal by metal oxides in a packed bed is studied on both thesystem level and the process level. Criteria for the selection of metal oxidesand the design of packed bed units are derived. A detailed analysis isundertaken to study the reaction of H2S with ZnO in a packed bed, wherethe nano-particles of ZnO experience void formation and outward growth.

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