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Experimental study on syngas production by co-gasification of coal and

biomass in a fluidized bed

Article  in  International Journal of Hydrogen Energy · April 2010

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijhydene.2009.04.046

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 international journal of hydrogen energy 35 (2010) 2722–2726

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Experimental study on syngas production by co-gasification

of coal and biomass in a fluidized bed

Kezhong Lia,b, Rong Zhanga, Jicheng Bia,*

a
State Key Laboratory of Coal Conversion, Institute of Coal Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, No. 27 South Taoyuan Road,
Taiyuan 030001, China
b
Graduate university of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, No.19A Yu Quan Road, Beijing 100049, China

article info abstract

Article history: The main results of an experimental work on co-gasification of a Chinese bituminous coal
Received 9 April 2009 and two types of biomass in a bench-scale fluidized bed are reported in the present study.
Accepted 11 April 2009 Experiments were performed at different oxygen equivalence ratio, steam/carbon ratio and
Available online 27 May 2009 biomass/coal ratio. In addition, stabilization of co-gasification process was investigated. It
was found that a relatively low oxygen equivalence ratio favors the increase of syngas yield
Keywords: (CO þ H2). There is a maximum value in the curve of syngas yield versus steam/carbon
Co-gasification ratio. Moreover, the content of H2 in gas increases with the increase of biomass ratio while
Biomass that of CO and syngas yield decrease. A continuous stable operation can be gained.
Coal ª 2009 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Fluidized bed

1. Introduction China is an agricultural economical country and has plenty

Hydrogen production based on fossil resource will still be
the main method for hydrogen production in the next
decades [1]. However, much consumption of fossil fuels has
caused serious energy crisis and environmental impact
globally. Co-gasification of coal and biomass, considered as
a bridge between energy productions based on fossil fuels
and energy production based on renewable fuels, has been
paid much attention in many countries [2–15]. The utiliza-
tion of biomass by co-gasification with coal makes reduc-
tions in CO2, nitrogen and sulfur emission due to the
renewable character of biomass and low contamination
content in biomass. Co-gasification of coal and biomass can
enlarge the scale of gasification and improve the tempera-
ture of the gasifier so that tar formation is retarded [14]. In
addition, coal or char particles can serve as bed materials in
fluidized beds to improve the fluidization quality of biomass
particles.
of biomass. Total agricultural and forest residues amount to
1163 million tons each year [16]. China is also the largest coal
producer and consumer in the world [17]. Therefore hydrogen
production by co-gasification of coal and biomass has
important significance in China. During the past decades,
some researchers have reported the co-gasification of coal and
biomass [2–15] from the viewpoint of feasibility of co-gasifi-
cation, applicability of biomass material and synergy.
However, co-gasification of coal and biomass is related with
many factors, the hydrodynamics and interactions between
coal and biomass in the fluidized bed co-gasification process
have scarcely been elucidated. In addition, systemic investi-
gations on co-gasification of coal and biomass in a fluidized
bed are relatively few. Therefore, in the present work, exper-
imental study on co-gasification of a Chinese bituminous coal
and two types of biomass was carried out in a bench-scale
self-heating fluidized bed with oxygen-rich air and steam.
Emphasis was put on the investigation of stabilization of

* Corresponding author. Tel./fax: þ86 351 4072379.

E-mail address: bijc@sxicc.ac.cn (J. Bi).
0360-3199/$ – see front matter ª 2009 Professor T. Nejat Veziroglu. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.ijhydene.2009.04.046
 international journal of hydrogen energy 35 (2010) 2722–2726 2723

co-gasification process and optimizing operational param- weight in the produced gas and the carbon weight in feedstock
eters for syngas production. that enters the gasifier. GE (%) is defined as the ratio between
the energy content in the produced gas and the energy of
feedstock that enters the gasifier. The calculation equations of
2. Experimental ER and Fs/Fc are given below.


ER ¼ the amount of oxygen supplied Nm3 =h =the amount
2.1. Coal and biomass samples

of oxygen required for complete combustion Nm3 =h :
A bituminous coal, Shenmu coal (SMC) from Shaanxi Province (1)
and two types of biomass, pine sawdust (PS) and rice straw
(RS) from Shanxi Province of China were used in this study. Fs=Fc ¼ the flowrate of steamðkg=hÞ=
Table 1 shows the properties of the samples. The samples the feedrate of carbonðkg=hÞ: (2)
were dried at 90  C in an oven for 20 h prior to use. The mean
diameter of biomass particles in the experiments was
0.42 mm. Coal particles of two different mean diameters 3. Results and discussion
(CMD), 0.25 mm and 0.75 mm, were used in this study.
It is generally agreed that the gasification of coal and biomass
2.2. Apparatus and procedure in a fluidized bed occurs through three steps: initial fast
pyrolysis, secondary reactions of volatile matters and gasifi-
The experiments were performed in a fluidized bed gasifier cation reactions of char with steam and CO2. The main gasi-
with a 120 mm internal diameter and a 1578 mm height, as fication reactions in an atmospheric gasifier are given below.
shown in Fig. 1. Five thermocouples at different height of the
gasifier were used to measure the wall temperatures. In this
study, T2 is considered as bed temperature since the T3 Oxidation: C þ O2 5 CO2 (3)
thermocouple is in the lean phase zone and T1 in the oxi-
dization zone. Coal and biomass were blended sufficiently and
then stored in a hopper. The mixtures were fed by means of Partial oxidation: C þ 1/2O2 5 CO (4)
a screw feeder, whose rotary speed was controlled by a timing
motor. The primary oxygen-rich air and steam (300  C)
Water-gas: C þ H2O 5 CO þ H2 (5)
entered the gasifier through a reverse conical gas distributor
and the secondary air entered the gasifier through bottom
ash-discharging pipe. The fly ash carried by hot gas out of the
Water-gas shift: CO þ H2O 5 CO2 þ H2 (6)
gasifier was separated by a cyclone and collected in the ash
vessel. The gas was sampled at an interval of 20–30 min and
analyzed by gas chromatograms.
Boudouard: C þ CO2 5 2CO (7)

2.3. Parameters definition and methods of data

processing Steam reforming: CH4 þ H2O 5 CO þ 3H2 (8)

To well describe the gasification process, some parameters
such as oxygen equivalence ratio (ER), steam/carbon ratio (Fs/
Fc), total gas yield (TGY), syngas yield (SGY, CO þ H2), carbon
conversion (CC) and gasification efficiency (GE) are employed.
TGY (Nm3/kg fuel) and SGY (Nm3/kg fuel) on a dry basis are
calculated based on the material balance of nitrogen and gas
composition. CC (%) is defined as the ratio between the carbon
The values of the variables that were manipulated and the
main results of some typical experiments are shown in
Table 2. It can be observed that co-gasification of coal and
biomass has higher carbon dioxide, hydrogen and methane
content in gas product compared with coal gasification.
However, a decrease in carbon monoxide content was detec-
ted. Relatively higher gasification efficiency can be attained

Table 1 – Property analysis of the coal and biomass samples.

Sample Proximate analysis/wt%, ad Ultimate analysis/wt%, ad HHV/(MJ kg1)b

M Ash VM FC C H Oa N S

SMC 3.78 9.19 28.51 58.52 70.35 4.56 10.53 1.04 0.55 28.22
PS 9.91 1.55 73.63 14.91 45.39 4.02 38.10 0.62 0.41 16.29
RS 5.58 12.64 65.23 16.55 38.61 4.28 37.16 1.08 0.65 14.40

M – moisture, VM – volatile matter, FC – fixed carbon, ad – air dry basis.

a By difference.
b Higher heating value, ad.
2724 international journal of hydrogen energy 35 (2010) 2722–2726

3.2. Effect of ER

Fig. 1 – Schematic diagram of the fluidized bed apparatus:
1 – water tank, 2 – cyclone, 3 – ash vessel, 4 – water cooler,
5 – gasifier, 6 – hopper, 7 – screw feeder, 8 – motor, 9 –
steam generator, 10 – compressor, and 11 – oxygen
cylinder.
through adjusting the operational parameters for co-gasifi-
cation of coal and biomass.
3.1. Stabilization of the co-gasification system
The mixture of coal and pine sawdust with the blending ratio
of 2:1 was used to characterize the stabilization of the co-
gasification system. The gasifier was run for about 90 min
before sampling to make sure that an approximate steady-
state had been reached. Then gases were sampled and
analyzed by gas chromatograms at an interval of 30 min. The
results were displayed in Table 3. It can be seen that the gas
compositions hardly changed within 5 h. A continuous stable
operation can be attained.
The mixture of coal and pine sawdust with the blending ratio
of 2:1 was used in this experiment. With the increase of ER
from 0.31 to 0.47, more oxygen is offered to enhance the
combustion of fuel in dense phase zone and the bed temper-
ature increases from 948  C to 1026  C. The effect of ER on gas
composition and syngas yield is plotted in Fig. 2. It can be
noted that the concentrations of hydrogen and carbon
monoxide in fuel gas decrease with the increase of ER. One
possible reason is that the decrease of the C/O molar ratio may
lead part of carbon monoxide and hydrogen produced in
dense phase zone to be oxidized in the lean phase zone. At the
same time, more nitrogen was brought into the gasifier by
fluidizing air, which will carry out a lot of heat and reduce the
concentration of the effective components in fuel gas. In
addition, the fluidized velocity increases and the residence
time of coal and biomass particles in gasifier becomes short
with the increase of ER. Thus, the amount of carbon reacting
with gasification medium reduces. This effect becomes great
for co-gasification process compared with coal gasification
due to the low densities of biomass particles. Though the TGY
increased with the rise of ER, the SGY decreased. Therefore,
a relatively smaller ER is advantageous to increase the SGY.
Pinto et al. [8] investigated the effect of oxygen/fuel ratio on
co-gasification of coal, pine and PE in a fluidized bed gasifier
and found that the increase in O2 flow rate led to an increase
in CO and CO2 concentrations, while there was a reduction in
the content of H2 in the gas product. This difference may be
due to the higher ER range adopted in this study.
3.3. Effect of Fs/Fc ratio
The mixture used in this test is coal and pine sawdust with the
pine sawdust ratio of 33 wt%. With the Fs/Fc ratio increases
from 0.26 to 0.88, the bed temperature decreases from 1033  C
to 921  C. This is because the increase of steam favors the

Table 2 – Typical results of selected runs.

Run 1a 3a 6b 9b 10b 12b

SMC (kg/h) 2.00 2.00 3.00 2.40 2.00 2.40

PS (kg/h) 1.00 1.00 0.00 0.60 1.00 0.00
RS (kg/h) 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.60
Oxygen concentration (vol%) 50.60 47.91 50.37 50.60 43.20 43.20
ER (Nm3/Nm3) 0.30 0.42 0.42 0.37 0.34 0.32
Fs/Fc (kg/kg) 0.41 0.41 0.45 0.48 0.51 0.49
Tbed ( C) 990 1021 971 1045 953 940
CO2 (%) 19.68 20.22 17.32 19.07 19.43 18.10
H2 (%) 21.83 19.30 17.00 17.66 20.71 21.96
N2 (%) 21.20 29.54 28.12 25.51 28.20 29.51
CO (%) 34.19 28.85 36.64 36.00 29.13 28.26
CH4 (%) 3.10 2.09 0.92 1.76 2.54 2.17
TGY (Nm3/kg fuel) 1.75 1.94 2.22 1.94 2.01 1.92
SGY (Nm3/kg fuel) 0.98 0.93 1.19 1.04 1.00 0.97
CC (%) 85.99 85.71 92.95 90.21 88.89 78.19
GE (%) 60.10 55.51 56.46 56.23 60.92 54.71

a CMD is 0.25 mm.

b CMD is 0.75 mm.
 international journal of hydrogen energy 35 (2010) 2722–2726 2725

Table 3 – Gas composition versus time (material: coal/pine sawdust, oxygen concentration: 50.6 vol%, CMD: 0.25 mm,
ER [ 0.3, Fs/Fc [ 0.41, bed temperature: 980 ± 10 8C).
Run time (min) 90 120 150 180 210 240 270 300

CO2 20.56 19.31 19.68 21.04 19.69 19.21 19.64 19.74

H2 21.63 22.54 21.83 21.47 21.62 21.37 21.77 21.57
N2 22.40 21.38 21.20 21.89 22.49 22.84 22.95 22.75
CO 32.13 33.78 34.19 33.10 32.48 33.33 33.15 33.50
CH4 3.28 2.99 3.10 2.50 3.72 3.25 2.49 2.44

water-gas reaction (5) and steam reforming reaction (8). The
two reactions are both endothermic. In addition, the caloric
used for heating the steam and that was carried out of the
gasifier by the undecomposed steam increase with the rise of
Fs/Fc ratio. The above reasons cause the decrease of the bed
temperature.
The effect of the Fs/Fc ratio on the gas composition and
SGY is shown in Fig. 3. It can be seen that both the concen-
trations of hydrogen and carbon monoxide and SGY increase
at first and then decrease with the rise of Fs/Fc ratio, and the
ratio of CO/H2 shows a decrease trend. These results are
consistent with the study by Vélez et al. [15] when co-gasifi-
cation of Colombian coal with coffee husk (biomass ratio 15%)
and sawdust (biomass ratio 6%). On one hand, the rise of
steam partial pressure favors the water-gas reaction (5),
water-gas shift reaction (6) and steam reforming reaction (8).
On the other hand, the decrease of bed temperature is
disadvantageous to the water-gas reaction (5) and boudouard
reaction (7), but favors the water-gas shift reaction (6).
Furthermore, more fine particles are carried out of the gasifier
with the increase of fluidized velocity. As a result, the amount
of carbon reacting with gasifying agents decreases, which, in
turn, causes the decrease of SGY.
When the Fs/Fc ratio is less than 0.5, the effect of steam
partial pressure is significant, resulting in the increase of SGY
and the concentrations of CO and H2 with the rise of Fs/Fc
ratio. However, when the Fs/Fc ratio exceeds 0.5, the drop in
bed temperature and the fine particles carried out of the
gasifier increase dramatically, which become the dominant
factors and cause decreases of hydrogen and carbon
monoxide yield in fuel gas.
3.4. Effect of biomass ratio
Many types of biomass particles have anomalistic shape, high
water content and low bulk density. Furthermore, the equiv-
alence diameter of biomass particles has much difference.
Therefore, it is difficult for some biomass particles to be well
fluidized in fluidized beds [18,19]. While previous study [20]
showed that, a good fluidization quality can be gained to the
mixtures of coal and biomass with similar size when the
biomass ratio is less than 50 wt%.
In the case of the mixtures of coal and pine sawdust, the
bed temperature increased from 912  C to 976  C with the
biomass ratio increases from 0 to 33 wt%. One possibility is
that the combustion reactivity of biomass char is higher than
that of coal char. When biomass entered the gasifier, pyrolysis
happened fast, part of volatiles burning at the bottom of the
gasifier is another possible reason for the rise of the bed
temperature [11]. In addition, compared with coal, the fixed
carbon of biomass is low. With the increase of biomass ratio,
the amount of gasified carbon decreases at the same ER and
Fs/Fc ratio. Therefore, the heat needed for gasification reac-
tions decreases. The increase of bed temperature might be
also caused by the decrease of fine particles carried out of the
gasifier, because the increase of biomass ratio will lead to
a decrease of the apparent velocity in the gasifier at the same
ER, Fs/Fc ratio and fuel feedrate due to the low carbon content
in biomass.
In Fig. 4, the effect of biomass ratio on gas composition and
SGY is presented. It can be found that with the increase of
biomass ratio, the content of H2 increases while that of CO

Fig. 2 – Gas composition and SGY versus ER (material: coal/ Fig. 3 – Gas composition and SGY versus Fs/Fc (material:
pine sawdust, oxygen concentration: 50.6 vol%, CMD: coal/pine sawdust, oxygen concentration: 47.9 vol%, CMD:
0.75 mm, Fs/Fc [ 0.83, bed temperature: 948–1026 8C). 0.75 mm, ER [ 0.42, bed temperature: 921–1033 8C).
2726 international journal of hydrogen energy 35 (2010) 2722–2726
Fig. 4 – Gas composition and SGY versus biomass ratio
(material: coal/pine sawdust, oxygen concentration: 50.6
vol%, CMD: 0.75 mm, ER [ 0.34, Fs/Fc [ 0.77, bed
temperature: 912–976 8C).
decreases. The amount of gasified carbon decreases with the
increase of biomass ratio due to the low fixed carbon content
in biomass compared with coal, which leads to an increase of
steam/fixed-carbon ratio at the same Fs/Fc ratio. Thus the
increase of biomass ratio favors the water-gas shift reaction
(6). With the increase of biomass ratio, a slight decrease is
detected in SGY due to the low carbon content in biomass.
4. Conclusions
Co-gasification of coal and biomass in a fluidized bed was
studied in the present work. A continuous stable operation
could be gained when the biomass ratio was no more than 33
wt%. The highest gasification efficiency is 60.92%. Accord-
ingly, the syngas yield and carbon conversion are 1.00 Nm3/(kg
fuel) and 88.89%, respectively. Co-gasification of coal and
biomass is one of the promising ways for hydrogen
production.
The concentration of hydrogen in gas product decreases
with the increase of ER, but increases almost linearly with the
biomass ratio. Carbon monoxide concentration and SGY show
the similar decrease tendency with the rise of ER and biomass
ratio. There are optimal values for SGY and the concentrations
of hydrogen and carbon monoxide with the rise of Fs/Fc ratio.
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