Modeling of Oil Palm frond Gasification process in a multi-stage downdraft gasifier using Aspen Plus
Arif Rahman Saleh (a*), Bambang Sudarmanta (b), Sigit Mujiarto (a), Kun Suharno (a), Sri Widodo (a)
a) Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universitas Tidar, Magelang
*arifrahmansaleh[at]untidar.ac.id
b) Departement of Mechanical Engineering, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, Surabaya
Abstract
Oil palm plantations produce waste that has not been used so far, namely oil palm fronds. This waste can be converted into energy in the form of producer gas using gasification technology. This study aimed to model the gasification process using Aspen PLUS in a multi-stage gasifier by adding air at the pyrolysis and oxidation zone. The influence of variations in air ratio (AR) between the pyrolysis and oxidation zones (0 - 50%) and the effect of gasification temperature from 700 - 1000oC on the producer gas composition were analyzed. Besides, the equivalent ratio (ER) is also varied from 0.3 - 0.5 to get the optimum syngas composition. From the modeling results, the rate of CO production is increased along with the increase in the temperature of pyrolysis while CO2 and char decrease. Besides, H2O and H2 also increase because the significant amount of inherent moisture is released from the feedstock. However, CH4 is unpredictable. Overall, Aspen PLUS modeling in this study can be used to obtain optimum operating conditions with variations of ER and AR
Keywords: Oil Palm Frond; Gasification; Multi-stage Gasification; Oxidative Pyrolysis
Topic: Mechanical Engineering