Abstract:
A dual-bed gasifier was developed to produce syngas from biomass via gasification for power generation or chemicals production.According to previous literatures, syngas produced from the dual-bed gasifier had higher heating value than that produced from other typicalgasifiers. However, consideringthe syngas as precursors for methanol/DME synthesis, itwas not suitable due toits relatively low H₂/CO ratio. A way to increase H₂/CO ratio of the syngas is catalytic reforming of CH₄ in the syngas. In this research,Catalytic reforming was studied to be incorporated in the syngas production from the dual-bed gasifier in order to improve yield of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, and also H₂/CO ratio.
The experiment was divided into two parts. The first part wasto find a suitable catalyst and operatingtemperaturefor catalytic reforming of methane using a lab-scale fixed-bed reactor. Ni/Al, Ni-Mo-Al and NiO/MgO/Al₂O₃were employed as catalysts in this part.The second part was to study the effect of catalytic reformeron gas product obtained from the dual-bed system using the selected catalyst from the first part. The results from experiment part 1 showed that the effective catalyst was Ni/Al and the optimum temperature of catalytic reforming of methane was 700°C.The results from the other part indicated that the produced syngasafter catalytic reforming hadlower CH₄ andhigher H₂/CO ratio comparing to the syngas before catalytic reforming.