Biomass Conv. Bioref.
(2016) 6:49–59
DOI 10.1007/s13399-015-0174-6
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
CO2 gasification behavior of biomass chars in an entrained
flow reactor
Kawnish Kirtania 1 & Sankar Bhattacharya 2
Received: 9 January 2015 / Revised: 2 June 2015 / Accepted: 1 July 2015 / Published online: 14 July 2015
# Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015
Abstract Chars of different particle sizes (150–250, 500–
600 μm) from two different biomass species (spruce and co-
conut shell) were gasified under entrained flow condition in
the presence of CO2 at different temperatures (800, 900 and
1000 °C). The concentration of CO2 was also varied between
5 and 20 % to determine its effect. It was found that significant
improvement in gasification efficiency is possible by lowering
the particle size below 0.5 mm. This finding was attrib-
uted to the spruce char as it showed the highest
(≈50 %) conversion for the lowest particle size. It was
also revealed that less reactive chars (coconut shell)
were insensitive to the particle size and temperature
variation for CO2 as a gasifying agent. Generally, py-
rolysis process dominates the conversion process during
raw biomass gasification. No tar component was ob-
served during gasification at 1000 °C. As a whole, this
study provides useful insight about the entrained flow
gasification process of biomass chars with CO2.
Keywords Biomass . Char . Gasification . Entrained flow
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article
(doi:10.1007/s13399-015-0174-6) contains supplementary material,
which is available to authorized users.
* Kawnish Kirtania
kawnish.kirtania@ltu.se; kkdwip@gmail.com
1
Division of Energy Science, Department of Engineering Sciences
and Mathematics, Luleå University of Technology,
SE-97187 Luleå, Sweden
2
Department of Chemical Engineering, Monash University,
Clayton, VIC 3800, Australia
1 Introduction
To meet the new energy standard, it has become essential to
increase the use of biomass in the primary energy production.
For this, entrained flow gasification of biomass is an efficient
and flexible option considering its uniqueness for feedstock
handling and low residence time [1]. Also because of this
characteristic, the effect of operating parameters on the pro-
cess can be the most important determinant for gasification
efficiency. Usually, entrained flow gasification is performed
at a very high temperature. On the other hand, it would be
preferable to conduct biomass gasification at a lower temper-
ature considering the cost. To address this trade off, choosing
the optimum operating parameters would be of great
importance.
In some earlier studies, few types of biomass were studied
under entrained flow gasification by varying different operat-
ing parameters. In most cases, gasification was performed in
the presence of an oxidant—either oxygen [2, 3] or air [4–11].
However, using air during gasification decreases the energy
content of the produced gas due to the large amount of N2
present in the system. That is why, the producer gas is called
low Btu gas [1]. On the other hand, pure oxygen is expensive
unless it is a by-product of another process. Hernandez et al.
[6] studied the effect of steam and air addition to biomass
gasification process at different ratio at different temperatures.
They found that reforming of char and CH4 was promoted
along with water gas shift reaction for steam addition. On
the other hand, CO and H2 yields were increased by air gasi-
fication. The particle size effect was also studied over a very
wide range by Hernandez et al. [12] which showed visible
increase for the particles under 1 mm. Therefore, it is neces-
sary to perform gasification at that particle size range as those
will be suitable for entrained flow gasification at a lower
temperature.
50
Influence of reactor length and residence time was studied
by Zhao et al. [4] and Hernandez et al. [8], respectively. After
a critical reactor length, the gas flow and conversion were
found to be saturated. In contrast, increase in residence time
showed positive effect on CO and H2 production. However,
the biomass species were not similar in both cases and cannot
be compared directly. But, it is important to evaluate the con-
tradictory findings from these studies. Qin et al. [9]
established that at a very high temperature (1400 °C), the
residence time would have minimal effect if it is over
2.5 s. In the case of temperature, there is no ambiguity
about its influence on the gasification and conversion.
Significant increase in gas production was observed for
different biomass from 700 °C to 1400 °C by Zhou
et al. [2], Lapuerta et al. [8], Hernandez et al. [6] and
Zhao et al. [4] in separate studies.
As a whole, the operating parameters did not follow any
particular pattern which could generalize the results. However,
these studies provide valuable information about the effect of
temperature, residence time, particle size and excess air ratio
on gasification of raw biomass. Increasing temperature was
definitely one of the most popular options to increase the
conversion and gas yield. At the same time, it is essential to
study the entrained flow gasification with individual gasifying
agents such as CO2 and H2O to produce the right ratio of CO
and H2 mixture. It is, therefore, also important for modeling
purpose which can be later useful for scaling up the process.
As char gasification is the slowest step of all, it is also neces-
sary to study it individually. Disappointingly, char gasification
studies under entrained flow condition are scarce in literature.
A few studies in pressurized drop tube furnace were per-
formed by Kajitani et al. [13, 14] which addressed the effect
of pressure and temperature on the kinetics of the coal char
gasification process under CO2 and air separately. However,
those studies were mainly performed under kinetic control
using very small particles and did not consider the particle
size effect. Another notable work was performed by Tanner
et al. [15] on low temperature gasification of Victorian brown
coal char under entrained flow by varying the operating pa-
rameters. They found that the temperature (up to 1000 °C) and
residence time (up to 6 s) were not sufficient to convert the
coal char completely. Most other char gasification studies con-
cern reactivity and kinetics in thermogravimetric analyzer.
Moreover, depending on the species, the char gasification be-
havior might become very different. That is why biomass
gasification cannot be compared directly with coal char gasi-
fication and therefore, biomass species need to be studied
individually under relevant conditions to be considered for
large-scale gasification.
Based on the discussion above, this study aims to
assess CO2 gasification of chars obtained from entrained
flow pyrolysis of two biomass feedstock to evaluate the
e ff e c t s o f t e m p e r a t u r e , p a r t i c l e s i z e , a n d g a s
Biomass Conv. Bioref. (2016) 6:49–59
concentration. As standard feedstock for gasification,
sawdust was selected, whereas coconut shell was chosen
as non-standard feedstock for comparison. Along with
comparison, another reason behind selecting coconut
shell was to assess its gasification potential under
entrained flow condition.
2 Materials and methods
2.1 Sample preparation
Norway spruce (Picea abies) and coconut shell were pyro-
lyzed at 1000 °C to ensure complete devolatilization in an
entrained flow reactor (1.885 m) with parent particle sizes in
the range of 150–250 and 500–600 μm. The particle sizes
were chosen in a way that they were distinct enough to exert
difference in gasification characteristics yet suitable for
entrained flow condition. The pyrolysis time for different par-
ticle sizes and samples varied from 0.16 to 0.7 s, whereas the
residence time inside the reactor varied from 2 s (for coconut
shell 500–600 μm) to 9 s ( for spruce 150–250 μm). There-
fore, the residence time for pyrolysis was enough for a com-
plete devolatilization. It is assumed that the surface area of
different samples was not affected significantly by the higher
residence time for the smaller particles in the absence of any
activating agent (i.e., CO2 and H2O) [16]. The particle size
distributions of the raw and pyrolyzed samples are given in
Fig. 1a, b, respectively. The raw samples were well distributed
in particle size. After pyrolysis, particle size of spruce shrank
to some extent, whereas coconut shell was almost unchanged.
These samples were used as received from the entrained flow
pyrolysis process without any further sieving or grinding to
retain the char structure. The chars were denoted as spruce
char (SC) and coconut shell char (CSC) with average particle
size (e.g., 200 for 150–250 μm) in the following figures and
manuscript. The adsorbed moisture on the char surface was
measured by a halogen moisture analyzer (Model HB43-
S, Mettler-Toledo, USA). Table 1 shows the ultimate
analysis and surface area (CO2 adsorption) of the sam-
ples which was determined by ultimate analyzer (Model
2400, PerkinElmer, USA) and ASAP 2020 (Accelerated
Surface Area and Porosimetry System, Micromeritics,
USA), respectively. Due to the limitations of using N2
adsorption at −196 °C for measuring surface area, CO2
adsorption (0 °C) method was chosen [17]. In the raw
sample, sawdust had (0.1 % S) lower sulfur content
than coconut shell (0.95 % S). Therefore, all the sulfur
was released during pyrolysis for the smaller particle
size of sawdust, whereas the larger particles retained
some. On the other hand, coconut shell char had some
sulfur left for both the samples.
Biomass Conv. Bioref. (2016) 6:49–59 51

Fig. 1 Particle size distributions 1

of a the raw biomass and b the
chars from biomass
a
0.9

0.8

Cumulative mass fraction

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2
Spruce 150−250 µm
Coconut Shell 150−250 µm
0.1 Spruce 500−600 µm
Coconut Shell 500−600 µm
0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Particle size (µm)

0.9
b

0.8
Cumulative mass fraction

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4

0.3

0.2
Spruce Char from 150−250 µm
Coconut Shell Char from 150−250 µm
0.1 Spruce Char from 500−600 µm
Coconut Shell Char from 500−600 µm
0
0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 800 900 1000
Particle size (µm)

2.2 Experimental
2.2.1 Setup
Entrained flow gasification of the char particles was conduct-
ed in the same reactor used for pyrolysis. The outer shell of the
tube was used for preheating the gas before entering the reac-
tor. The furnace enclosing the reactor was heated to the desired
temperature before the experiment. The reactor was 2 m
long with a reaction zone of 1.885 m. A quartz connec-
tor at the bottom was used to collect the residual mass
after gasification, whereas the gas line was passed
through two cold traps and particulate filter. After the
particulate filter, a micro gas chromatograph (micro-GC,
Varian CP-4900, Agilent Technologies, USA) was con-
nected to measure the gas composition. The micro-GC
detects H2, N2, and CO in the first column, and CO2
and CxHy in the second column, respectively. Further
details about the experimental setup can be found else-
where [18]. It is to be noted that if this process is to be
adopted for pilot scale, an autothermal operation would
be ensured by burning some biomass or char.
52 Biomass Conv. Bioref. (2016) 6:49–59

Table 1 Ultimate analysis (wt%,

db) and CO2 surface area of the Samples C H N S O Ash Surface area (m2/g)
chars
Spruce char, 150–250 μm 89.31 1.22 0.62 – 2.15 6.7 446.4
Spruce char, 500–600 μm 82.97 2.11 0.88 0.08 8.26 5.7 295.4
Coconut shell char, 150–250 μm 87.01 1.73 0.73 0.08 4.75 5.7 475.4
Coconut shell char, 500–600 μm 83.85 1.92 0.47 0.19 8.17 5.4 407.9

2.2.2 Procedure Two repeats were performed at each experimental condition

with relevant product analysis.
Char feeding was started from the top using a vibratory feeder
after making sure the reaction environment was sealed. De-
pending on the sample and particle size, the feeding rate was 3 Results and discussion
varied between 1 and 6 g/h. A continuous feeding was main-
tained for each experiment. N2 gas flow of 1 L/min was main- 3.1 Char conversion
tained from the top to ensure particle feeding. At the bottom of
the reactor, CO2 was mixed with N2 to vary the concentration Entrained flow gasification is distinct from other types of gas-
of the gasifying agent, whereas total bottom gas flow was kept ification processes because of low residence time required to
constant to 4 L/min. The gas flows (in L) are expressed at
normal temperature and pressure (NTP) throughout this man-
uscript. Gasification experiments were performed at three dif-
ferent concentrations of CO2—5, 10, and 20 % by volume to
observe the effect of concentration. The highest concentration
under consideration was well above the stoichiometric amount
needed for char gasification. Along with gas concentration,
experiments were conducted at three different temperatures:
800, 900, and 1000 °C. As gasification process is sensitive to
temperature change at lower temperatures, the selection of
temperatures was expected to show distinctive effects. How-
ever, at 800 °C, gasification was performed under only 20 %
CO2, as very low conversion was expected from previous
kinetic study [19]. To calculate the conversion, ash tracing
method [12, 20] was used using a thermo-gravimetric analyzer
(Model STA 449 F3 Jupiter®, NETZSCH-Gerätebau GmbH,
Germany) along with verification from the gas side calcula-
tion. Residence time was calculated following the method
described in [21] assuming negligible density change of char
during gasification. For the gas analysis, the readings obtained
by the micro-GC were analyzed by calculating the area under
the peaks for the respective gases and thereby comparing with
the calibration curve and N2 gas (tracer) flow. The outlet gas
temperature after micro-GC was found to be 20 °C. For gas
side calculation, it was assumed that CO was only produced
from the Boudouard reaction and H2 was produced due to
breakage of bonds of the residual functional groups [22].
The trapped moisture in the pores of chars was neglected for
conversion calculation, as the production of H2 was minimal.
Also, it complied with the fact that the water-gas shift reaction
would not be governing the conversion process. For tar anal-
ysis, the collected particulate filters were cut into small pieces
to let them soak in dichloromethane overnight to analyze with
a gas chromatograph coupled with a mass spectrometer (GC- Fig. 2 Comparison of conversion from solid and gas side with 20 %
MS, Clarus SQ8 and Mass Spectrometry, PerkinElmer, USA). CO2—a 150–250 and b 500–600 μm
Biomass Conv. Bioref. (2016) 6:49–59 53

Fig. 3 Total gas yield and 2.5 100

residual mass with respect to
temperature under 20 % CO2 90

2 80

Total gas evolved (L/g char)

70

Percentage remaining (%)

1.5 60

50

1 40

30

0.5 20
SC 200
SC 550
10
CSC 200
CSC 550
0 0
800 850 900 950 1000 1050
o
Temperature ( C)

convert the particles. As char gasification is the slowest step
during conversion of biomass into gas, it is of great interest to
study the effect of operating parameters on the process. The
residence times for the samples were determined to be about 9,
4.5, 7, and 2.5 s for SC200, SC550, CSC200, and CSC550,
respectively. As mentioned in the experimental procedure,
solid conversion was verified from by ash tracing and gas
measurement. All the calculations were in good agreement
considering an experimental error of ±10 %. A representative
graph of the conversion comparison from both solid and gas
side is shown in Fig. 2 for the experiments performed under
20 % CO2 for two particle sizes. It shows the uncertainty
related to the conversion calculation. As seen in the figure,
the gas side conversion calculations were fairly close to the
solid side-based calculations. This means that only gas side
calculation would suffice the need for the char conversion
calculation for overall mass balance. It would be further sup-
ported later by the fact that no significant tar production was
observed.
3.2 Effect of temperature
Temperature is one of the most important factors to convert a
char particle completely during gasification. This study was
conducted in the low temperature to evaluate the biomass char
gasification behavior under entrained flow condition.

Fig. 4 Individual gas yields with 2.5 0.1

respect to temperature under 20 %
CO2 0.09

2 0.08

0.07
CO gas yield (L/g char)

H2 gas yield (L/g char)

1.5 0.06

0.05

1 0.04

0.03

0.5 0.02
SC 200
SC 550 0.01
CSC 200
CSC 550
0 0
800 850 900 950 1000 1050
Temperature (oC)
54 Biomass Conv. Bioref. (2016) 6:49–59

It was expected that temperature would have positive effect
on char conversion, but it was also important to quantitatively
determine the optimum temperature. Figure 3 shows the effect
of temperature on the total gas evolution at different temper-
ature under 20 % CO2. The plot also shows the remaining
mass after gasification on the right axis. It is notable that
coconut shell char did not show significant increase in gas
release with increasing temperature. In other words, solid con-
version varied from 2 to 8 %. On the other hand, about 25 and
50 % conversion were achieved for 150–250 and 500–
600-μm particle sizes, respectively, for spruce char. Both con-
version and gas release increased for different particle sizes
under consideration with increasing temperature. In this case,
the gas evolution could be considered as directly proportional
to the conversion of solids due to negligible or no tar produc-
tion during the char gasification process (as seen in Fig. 2).
However, the conversion efficiency cannot be directly related
to the microporous surface area of coconut shell and spruce
char, as the difference in surface area is not significant [23]
(Table 1). This might be due to the abundance of micropores

Fig. 5 Effect of gas 100

concentration on conversion—a Spruce Char o
150–250 and b 500–600 μm 90
1000 C
Coconut Char o
900 C
80 800 oC

70
Conversion (%)

60

50

40

30

20

10 Spruce

a Cococnut
0
0 5 10 15 20 25
Percentage of CO2

100

Spruce Char 1000 C

o
90
Coconut Char o
900 C
o
80 800 C

70
Conversion (%)

60

50

40

30

20

10
Spruce
b Cococnut
0
0 5 10 15 20 25
Percentage of CO2
Biomass Conv. Bioref. (2016) 6:49–59 55

over mesopores and macropores. According to some previous
studies [24, 25], mesopores and macropores promote faster
gasification. For biomass, pores are found in the range larger
than 20 nm [26].
To assess this, some of the char particles were gently
cracked with an agate mortar. The cracked particles were
placed on the sample stab under scanning electron microscope
(SEM), and thereby, imaging was carried out. The SEM im-
ages in Figs. S1 and S2 (attached as supplementary material)
showed that spruce char had the desired morphology of nu-
merous macropores (in the range of 100–250 nm) on the outer
and inner surface. This indicated the easier penetration of gas
into the inner surface of the particle. However, no mesopores
were observed in the instrument operating range (~50 nm). In
comparison, coconut shell char had individual pockets open-
ing up from the surface to release the volatiles. Significantly
less number of smaller macropores connecting the inner and
outer surface was observed which made it difficult for gas
penetration. This, basically, diminished the active surface area
for reaction. This was further confirmed by the delayed tran-
sition of coconut shell char gasification process into the intra-
particle diffusion regime (regime II) [19] with respect to
spruce char. The delayed transition to regime II suggests that
the surface reaction for coconut shell char was slower than the
mass transfer at a higher temperature with respect to spruce.
The transition temperature to regime II was ~804 °C for

Fig. 6 Effect of gas 2.5 0.1

concentration on the individual a
gas yields—a 900 and b 1000 °C 0.09

2 0.08

0.07
CO gas yield (L/g char)

H gas yield (L/g char)

2
1.5 0.06

0.05

1 0.04

0.03

0.5 0.02
SC 200
SC 550 0.01
CSC 200
CSC 550
0 0
0 5 10 15 20 25
Percentage of CO (%)
2

2.5 0.1

b 0.09

2 0.08

0.07
CO gas yield (L/g char)

H gas yield (L/g char)

2

1.5 0.06

0.05

1 0.04

0.03

0.5 0.02
SC 200
SC 550 0.01
CSC 200
CSC 550
0 0
0 5 10 15 20 25
Percentage of CO (%)
2
56 Biomass Conv. Bioref. (2016) 6:49–59

spruce char, whereas it was ~904 °C for coconut shell char sawdust at 1000 °C under 20 % CO2. The trend of increase in
[19]. As the activation energy for coconut shell and spruce CO production due to the increase in CO2 concentration was
char was found to be similar, the explanation based on the not linear as Fig. 4 (temperature dependence) shows.
surface area and slow surface reaction was logical in this case. This effect is dependent on the reaction order with re-
Another reason of low conversion of coconut shell char might spect to the partial pressure of CO2. Literature study
be the low residence time for the same reactor length because [19] shows that the order is less than one. So, the max-
of its higher density than wood. imum effect of CO2 concentration on CO production
As for the individual gas yield, CO produced from can be observed at lower concentration of CO2, while
Boudouard reaction was the dominant portion of the total this would not be significant at higher concentrations.
gas production, as this study considers CO2 gasification. Moreover, both particle size and temperature effects are
Figure 4 shows the individual gas release for the gasification observed in Fig. 6a. The production of CO did not
process. However, there was some H2 produced during gasi- increase noticeably for larger particle size at 900 °C,
fication. This H2 was produced due to the moisture (0.03– whereas both particle sizes followed a similar trend of
0.04 g H2O/g char) trapped in the pores of the char particles increase at 1000 °C (Fig. 6b). On the other hand, the
and some residual functional groups in the char [22]. It was yield of H2 dropped when CO2 concentration was in-
assumed that slightly higher H2 production for larger particles creased. However, the yield of H2 fluctuated, as the
was observed for their greater possibility of retaining the func- quantity of trapped moisture in the pores might vary
tional groups. However, H2 production did not follow any with particles.
general trend.
The lower conversion and gas release of the coconut shell
can be attributed to that fact that coconut shell char gasifica-
tion reactivity under CO2 was significantly lower than the
spruce char from entrained flow pyrolysis [19]. This implies
that the residence time (~7 s for CSC200 and ~2.5 s for
CSC550) was not enough for coconut shell char to achieve
significant conversion under the stated conditions. Moreover,
Fig. 1b shows that the particle size did not shrink as the spruce
char which affects the particle motion to some extent. How-
ever, this does not entirely invalidate the gasification possibil-
ity of the coconut shell char as full conversion can be still
possible at a higher temperature and/or using another gasifi-
cation agent. Steam could be a potential option in place of
CO2; however, due to instrument limitation, steam gasifica-
tion was not possible with the described setup for this study.

3.3 Effect of gas concentration

The effect of the gas concentration on conversion is depicted

in Fig. 5a for the particle size of 150–250 μm. At different
temperatures, spruce char showed almost linear increase in
conversion with respect to CO2 gas concentration, whereas
coconut shell char did not show any remarkable change.
At 800 °C, insignificant conversion took place under
20 % CO2 for both the samples. For larger particle size
(Fig. 5b), significant effect of gas concentration was
observed at 1000 °C for spruce. At lower temperatures,
the increase in concentration did not show any signifi-
cant influence on conversion.
The individual gas yields are shown in Fig. 6 for two dif-
ferent temperatures. At both temperatures, an increase in the
CO production for all the samples was observed for the in-
crease in gas concentration. A maximum of 2.1 L/g (at NTP)
of CO production was observed for the lower particle size of Fig. 7 Effect of particle size on char conversion—a 900 and b 1000 °C
Biomass Conv. Bioref. (2016) 6:49–59
3.4 Effect of particle size and reactor length
Decrease in particle size for spruce char showed significant
increase in the conversion and gas yield. Conversions were
almost doubled at 1000 °C for the smaller particle size com-
pared to the larger one at different concentrations of CO2. It is
explained in Fig. 7 how conversion changed with particle size.
As observed from the figure, coconut shell was insensitive to
the particle size variation due to its low reactivity. The con-
version is directly proportional to the CO production for the
current study. Therefore, it should be noted that if char reac-
tivity is really low [19], there is no benefit in reducing particle
size in the range below 1 mm. As the spruce char was collect-
ed after 90 % conversion, 50 % conversion during char gasi-
fication would contribute about 5 % to the total conversion of
biomass. In this context, char gasification revealed that mini-
mal conversion took place during gasification. Therefore, im-
portant design considerations should be made for entrained
flow gasification of biomass. For highly reactive chars, it would
be feasible to grind the particle size down, whereas for less
reactive chars, increasing temperature would be the right op-
tion. However, particle size reduction would always increase
the energy penalty [27]. From a scientific point of view, it is
rather interesting to observe the reaction time by obtaining
fractionally converted chars. With a complete conversion, it
would be difficult to determine the accurate conversion time.
In an earlier study [12], it was also reported that there is
significant variation in gas yield and conversion when particle
size was kept under 1 mm for biomass gasification. However,
those studies were performed on raw biomass and dominated
by the conversion caused by pyrolysis. As more than 80 % (in
Fig. 8 Influence of residence
time on char conversion
Conversion (%)
57
some cases 90 %) [21] conversion was achieved during py-
rolysis, the conversion during only char gasification was
overlooked as it fell in the error consideration. Therefore, the
importance of the study was in the evaluation of the char
gasification characteristics under a specific gasifying agent
to provide more data for design purpose.
In another study, Zhao et al. [4] found that the gas produc-
tion and conversion were saturated after a certain reactor
length. This is interesting to note that this conclusion was based
on the gasification of raw biomass and the produced gas was
the combination of pyrolysis and gasification process. With a
higher residence time, it is expected that gasification reaction
will continue as the reaction rate depends on the temperature.
Even at 1000 °C, gasification rate [28] would not be fast
enough to have a complete conversion of char in an entrained
flow reactor of with even 9 s of residence time. Residence time
can be increased by increasing reactor length, decreasing gas
velocity, and particle size. However, lowering the gas velocity
would result in not entraining the particles in the gas. In that
case, the particles would experience a free fall resulting in an
insignificant effect of gas velocity on residence time.
To observe the effect of residence time on char gasification
process, chars of larger particle size (500–600 μm) from both
the samples were fed twice through the entrained flow reactor
(combined reactor length—3.77 m) with 20 % CO2 gas flow
at 1000 °C. The result is described in Fig. 8 assuming a con-
tinuous reactor. It shows that increasing residence time had
positive effect on spruce char conversion, and the increase in
conversion was almost linear. Being kinetically limited by
temperature, coconut shell char also showed linear increase
in conversion; nevertheless, the increase was not significant.
100
Spruce Char 500−600 µm
90 Coconut Shell Char 500−600 µm
Projected conversion
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Residence time (s)
58
Figure 8 shows that for the same residence time, the conver-
sion of coconut shell reached half the conversion of the wood.
However, the extended trend (dotted line in Fig. 8) also re-
vealed that the coconut shell char would not reach the same
conversion as the spruce char even if it were subjected to the
same residence time (~9 s).
The tar analysis showed that there were a few small
polyaromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) peaks visible in the GC-
MS spectra. Those were identified as naphthalene, biphenyl
and isomers of 1-phenyl naphthalene respectively with in-
creasing retention time. This resulted from the tar compounds
condensed on the char particle during pyrolysis and the re-
maining functional groups. However, the intensity of the
peaks was very low. With increasing temperature (e.g.,
1000 °C), no visible peak was observed irrespective of particle
size and gas concentration variation. The reason of this disap-
pearance could be attributed to the transformation of this PAH
into soot (higher molecular weight) and also reaction with the
gasifying agent. Nevertheless, it was understood that most of
the tar was removed during the pyrolysis step.
4 Conclusion
This study addressed the char gasification behavior of biomass
using CO2 as gasifying agent. This information would be use-
ful for reactor design concerning the temperature, particle size,
and gas concentration variation. The effect of these parameters
showed positive impact on the gasification efficiency of the
reactive spruce char. In contrast, coconut shell char showed
indifference to the operating parameter variation due to its low
reactivity. This was attributed to its less macroporous nature
with inaccessibility to the inner surface. These findings are
important from the gasification point of view, as most of the
literature studies considered raw biomass gasification which
were overlapped with pyrolysis. Moreover, the results from
this study coupled with kinetics can be used to develop a
complete char gasification model.
Acknowledgments The research work was carried out at the Depart-
ment of Chemical Engineering, Monash University. The authors like to
acknowledge the financial and technical support for this work from Aus-
tralian Research Council (ARC) LIEF Grant (LE120100141) and
Monash Center for Electron Microscopy (MCEM) respectively.
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