GASIFICATION PERFORMANCE OF SUBBITUMINOUS COAL WITH SAWDUST AND SAWDUST PELLET

Utilisation of fossil fuel and biomass for power generation systems aids in minimising CO2 emission and fossil fuel
consumption, resulting in clean energy. The purpose of this study was to investigate the gasification performance of sub-bituminous coal (CL) with raw biomass; sawdust (SD) and pelletised biomass; sawdust pellet (SDP). Gasification was carried out in a lab-scale air-blown downdraft gasifier at a 1:1 mass ratio of CL with SD and SDP at a fixed condition of gasification temperature at 750 °C and equivalence ratio (ER) of 0.25. The gasification output was analysed in terms of syngas composition: hydrogen (H2), carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO) and methane (CH4), and the gasification performance: the calorific value of the syngas (CVsyngas), gasification efficiency (XGE) and carbon conversion efficiency (XCC). It was found out that CL/SDP produces high syngas composition than CL/SD, with a difference of 20%, 22%, 33% and 60% for H2, CO, CH4 and CO2, respectively. In addition, the CL/SDP outperformed the gasification performance for the CVsyngas, XGE and XCC at 4.958 MJ/Nm3, 25% and 34%,
respectively. Therefore, this study provides the preliminary investigation into mixing the pelletised biomass with fossil fuel to
improve the syngas composition and gasification performance while also tackling the biomass limitations.