Waste Management 34 (2014) 63–66

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Waste Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wasman

Production of high quality syngas from argon/water plasma gasification

of biomass and waste
M. Hlina ⇑, M. Hrabovsky, T. Kavka, M. Konrad
Thermal Plasma Department, Institute of Plasma Physics AS CR, v.v.i, Za Slovankou 1782/3, 182 00 Prague, Czech Republic

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Extremely hot thermal plasma was used for the gasification of biomass (spruce sawdust, wood pellets)
Received 27 February 2013 and waste (waste plastics, pyrolysis oil). The plasma was produced by a plasma torch with DC electric
Accepted 18 September 2013 arc using unique hybrid stabilization. The torch input power of 100–110 kW and the mass flow rate of
Available online 19 October 2013
the gasified materials of tens kg/h was set up during experiments. Produced synthetic gas featured very
high content of hydrogen and carbon monoxide (together approximately 90%) that is in a good agreement
Keywords: with theory. High quality of the produced gas is given by extreme parameters of used plasma – compo-
Plasma
sition, very high temperature and low mass flow rate.
Gasification
Biomass
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Tar

1. Introduction changes in process conditions. However, some AC plasma torches

The utilization of biomass as one of the sustainable energy
sources needs new technologies to gain the energy from biomass
in the form of high quality syngas.
Conventional methods such as simple oxidation or partial oxi-
dation without external heating (autothermal) are usually cheap,
convenient for heat production, but generally due to lower reaction
temperature and dilution by oxidation products unsuitable for
chemical production. Existing power plants can utilize biomass en-
ergy only by direct co-firing of biomass with coal (van der Meijden
et al., 2012).
The necessity of the production of clean syngas with controlled
composition has led to technologies based on allothermal pro-
cesses with external energy supply for materials gasification. Plas-
ma is a medium with the highest energy content and thus
substantially lower plasma flow rates are needed to supply suffi-
cient energy for gasification compared with other media used for
this purpose. This results in minimum contamination and dilution
of produced syngas by plasma gas and easy control of syngas com-
position (Hlina et al., 2010).
Thermal plasma (plasmas with local thermal equilibrium) offers
extreme properties – mainly very high temperature which can be
used for gasification. Most thermal plasmas are generated for gas-
ification by either an electric arc or by a radio-frequency induction
discharge (Heberlein and Murphy, 2008). In waste treatment, DC
arc plasmas dominate because they are relatively insensitive to
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +420 266 05 33 17.
E-mail addresses: hlina@ipp.cas.cz (M. Hlina), hrabovsky@ipp.cas.cz (M. Hrabovsky),
kavka@ipp.cas.cz (T. Kavka), konrad@ipp.cas.cz (M. Konrad).
for biomass gasification are known (Rutberg et al., 2004).
Plasma due to high energy content can directly gasify treated
materials without adding any oxidizing media but this scenario
would usually lead to carbon production at the expense of syn-
thetic gas production. Therefore, stoichiometric amount of CO2,
H2O, O2, air or appropriate mixture is added.
This paper presents the conversion of electrical energy to chem-
ical energy in a medium scale reactor equipped by H2O/Ar DC plas-
ma torch.
2. Experimental set-up
A DC plasma torch with adjustable arc power was used as the
source of energy for gasification. The plasma torch involves the com-
bination of arc stabilization by gas (cathode part), where the cathode
is protected against oxidation by Ar flow, followed by water stabiliza-
tion of the arc. Water is injected tangentially to the arc chamber of the
torch and forms a vortex that surrounds the electric arc. An anode is a
water cooled rotating copper disc. The arc power was 100–110 kW
during experiments. The simplified schema of the torch is in Fig. 1.
Produced plasma features extreme parameters such as very
high bulk temperature (18,000 K) together with low mass flow rate
(typically around 0.3 g/s H2O + 0.2 g/s Ar), however, due to com-
bined stabilization, a wide range of plasma properties can be ad-
justed (Hrabovsky et al., 2006). The ratio of net arc power to the
mass flow rate of plasma is up to 200 MJ/kg in a standard regime
that is approximately one order of magnitude higher than in the
case of other thermal plasma torches used for gasification
(e.g. Westinghouse MARC3: 7 MJ/kg). The conjuncture of these

0956-053X/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2013.09.018
64 M. Hlina et al. / Waste Management 34 (2014) 63–66
Fig. 1. Schema of the argon/water DC plasma torch.
parameters causes low concentrations of unwanted species such as
tars as well as low dilution of produced syngas by plasma gas so
well known among conventional gasification plants.
The plasma torch is mounted at the top of a reactor with water
cooled jacket. The reactor has 400 mm thick ceramic thermal insu-
lation and an inner volume of 0.22 m3. The inlet of gasified material
is on the top part of the reactor and the outlet of produced gas is in
the upper side of the reactor. The hopper for treated material with
the volume of 300 l is connected to the reactor by a controlled
speed screw feeder. Produced syngas enters a quenching chamber,
where the produced gas is cooled down to 300 °C by water spray
then enters a filter chamber and subsequently is burnt (Fig. 2). A
water ejector has recently been installed between the filter cham-
ber and the syngas burner so the reactor is operated at the slight
underpressure of several hundreds of Pa. Reaction temperature is
monitored by 8 thermocouples and ranged between 1,200 °C and
1,400 °C during experiments.
The measuring system included monitoring of plasma torch
operation parameters, temperatures of inner walls in the reactor,
calorimetric measurements of cooling water loops and the flow
rate of produced syngas as well as its composition. A sampling
probe for composition measurements was located at the reactor
output in front of the quenching chamber. This set-up enables
the fast quenching of the sampling gas that is similar to the
quenching of the main flow of produced gas. A quadrupole mass
spectrometer Pfeiffer Vacuum Omnistar GSD 301 with direct inlet
was used as a main gas analyzer. A freezing unit is placed between
the mass spectrometer and the sampling probe to avoid water
Fig. 2. Schema of the gasification unit (M = manually controlled valve).
condensation and the damaging of the mass spectrometer. For this
reason, the efficiency of the gasification process is preferably calcu-
lated as a carbon yield.
3. Results and discussion
Several types of materials were used for the gasification pro-
cess: wood sawdust (spruce, 10.5 % H2O), wood pellets (spruce,
6 mm diameter, 7.4% H2O, spruce wood composition was taken
accordingly to Vassilev et al. (2010)), waste plastics (pieces of 1–
6 mm, 89% HDPE, 10% PP, 1% PET, CH1,99 (mole composition)) and
pyrolysis oil from thermal decomposition of waste tires (complex
mixture of aromatic hydrocarbons, CH1,47 (mole composition)).
Elements with concentration under 1% (mass) were not taken into
account in the computation of theoretical composition. All the
materials need adding of a certain amount of oxidizing media
(CO2, O2, H2O or appropriate mixture) to achieve a syngas with the-
oretical composition closely corresponding to the mixture of CO
and H2.
Wooden substances and waste plastics are from the point of
pyrolysis temperature similar materials but pyrolysis oil differs.
It is the mixture containing wide range of fractions (from petrol
fraction to asphalt fraction) and the simulated distillation of pyro-
lysis oil showed the weight loss of 50% at 204 °C (90% at 417 °C).
The lighter fractions of pyrolysis oil should be gasified much easier
than other used materials because their evaporation as the first
step during gasification is energetically less demanding.
The throughputs of the materials for gasification ranged be-
tween 9 and 30 kg/h plus tens to hundreds of slm (standard liter
per minute) of CO2 in case of sawdust, pellets, waste plastics and
11 kg/h of H2O in case of pyrolysis oil. Results of the gasification
are summarized in Table 1.
The concentration of Ar was taken as zero because Ar was used
also for syngas flow rate calibration (the concentration of Ar from
plasma would affect the composition of syngas by 1–2 vol.%). It can
be seen that CO and H2 form approximately 90% of produced syn-
gas in all presented results. This was caused by extreme properties
of the plasma and by low dilution of the syngas by plasma gas
(formed mainly by hydrogen and oxygen). Carbon yield in the
experiments ranged between 80 and 100%. Lower values were
caused by the formation of solid carbon. Materials with smaller
particle sizes showed higher carbon yield usually (e.g. sawdust),
 M. Hlina et al. / Waste Management 34 (2014) 63–66 65

Table 1
Experimental parameters, syngas composition and syngas flow rate.

Feeding rate Oxidizing media CO CO2 H2 CH4 O2 Syngas flow rate Carbon yield
(kg/h) vol.% (slm)
Sawdust 30 CO2 50.9 4.3 41.6 2.3 0 961 1
Pellets 30 CO2 51.7 2.8 43.8 0.9 0 815 0.85
Plastics 11.4 CO2 49.7 7.4 41.6 0 1.3 855 0.8
Oil 9.1 H2O 30.2 4.2 59.5 4.5 0.1 323 0.93

Fig. 3. Comparison of measured composition of syngas with its ideal theoretical composition (measured values are the average of 10 min or longer well stabilized run).

that is in good agreement with theory because particle size influ- Table 2
ences the kinetics of the gasification process. Low CO2 concentra- Low heating value (LHV) of the produced syngas per time, LHV of gasified material per
tions, even in cases where CO2 was used as oxidizing medium, time, ratio of output LHV to input LHV.
showed sufficient reaction time and temperature in the reactor. Feeding Oxidizing Syngas Gasified Out/in
Moreover, extremely high centerline plasma velocity (5 km/s at rate media LHV/s material efficiency
the torch exit) causes strong turbulences in the inner volume of (kg/h) (slm)n (kg/ (kW) LHV/s (kW)
the reactor. Therefore, the temperatures of the inner walls of the hod)⁄

reactor on different places showed just small variances. Sawdust 30 CO2 86n 188.2 140.2 1.34
Measured compositions of produced syngas closely correspond Pellets 30 CO2 86n 157.4 145.1 1.08
Plastics 11.4 CO2 300n 153.5 139.3 1.10
with ideal theoretical composition (Fig. 3). Previous measurements
Oil 9.1 H2O 10.8⁄ 64.8 99.8 0.64
also revealed very low tar concentrations – under 10 mg/N m3 (Hli-
na et al., 2006).
It is evident that the described gasification process works well The energy efficiency of gasification is reduced by the torch effi-
and increasing of reaction temperature or reactor volume would ciency, losses to reactor walls and primarily the produced gas
not make any sense but does the heating value of produced gas leaves the reactor at the temperature of 1,200 °C that disadvan-
cover the electricity consumption? Is the gasified material energet- tages the process from the energetic point of view when just the
ically richer after the gasification with taking into account the yield energy stored in syngas is taken into account. The described pro-
of the gasification? Answers to these questions are summarized in cess is energy demanding but if we consider high quality produced
Table 2. syngas and complicated electricity storage we can take a view that
The highest efficiency was in the case of gasification of wood this can be the right way at least in some cases.
sawdust and slightly higher than for pellets and waste plastics.
Low efficiency was obtained in the case of pyrolysis oil. The pyro- 4. Conclusions
lysis oil has high heating value by itself (LHV = 39.5 MJ/kg), the The plasma gasification of wood, waste plastics and pyrolysis oil
flow rate of oxidizing medium (H2O) was comparable to mass flow was performed in the reactor equipped by H2O/Ar plasma torch
rate of the oil and the heating of water (due to its high heat capac- with extreme properties of plasma. These plasma properties,
ity) effected unfavourably the energy efficiency of the gasification. mainly the high temperature, low mass flow rate, and its composi-
The gasification of pyrolysis oil is also a partial oxidation due to the tion (hydrogen–oxygen plasma with a small amount of Ar) lead to
lack of oxygen in oil. The low heating value of syngas was higher the production of high quality synthetic gas with the high content
than the torch input power (about 100 kW) with the exception of of CO and H2 and negligible content of tars, but this matter of fact is
pyrolysis oil where the low heating value of the syngas was com- bought back by higher electricity demand on the other hand, how-
parable to the input power. The gasification of the wood and plas- ever, the described process is successful as a principal testing of a
tics could be used as an energy storage process. new technology.
The net energy recovery is 3.0, 1.9, 4,7 and 3.1 kWh/kg for
sawdust, pellets, waste plastics and pyrolysis oil respectively. The Acknowledgements
gasification of pyrolysis oil is not energetically self-sufficient. This The authors gratefully acknowledge the support by the Grant
insufficiency could be excused in case of dangerous waste materi- Agency of the Czech Republic under the project No. P205/11/
als gasification. 2070 and by the MSM/ME project MEB020814.
66 M. Hlina et al. / Waste Management 34 (2014) 63–66

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