A Senior Level Experiment on Developing an Energy Efficient Biomass Gasification Process

The continuing depletion of non-renewable fuels has prompted the search for alternative sources of energy.Biomass is waste derived from previously living materials such as wood and Municipal Solid Waste, and has been identified as a potential source of energy because it is renewable and abundant.Gasification is one process that can be used to extract energy out of this biomass.Typically used with fossil fuels such as coal, gasification of biomass can generate syngas, which is a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen.Despite the increasing popularity of green engineering, full stand-alone courses addressing this topic would be difficult to insert into the already full chemical engineering curriculum.One potential way to expose students to green engineering is through the senior level unit-operations laboratory.To this end, a new unit-operations lab experiment centered on the biomass gasification process will be developed.Students will vary the temperature and heating rate of the gasifier, along with volume and moisture content of the biomass.Moreover, students will use gas chromatography to analyze the composition of the syngas produced, and will perform empirical mass and energy balances to serve as a theoretical basis of comparison.These results will allow students to determine the optimal parameters for extracting the most energy from the gasification system.In addition to this experimental work, the background and theory section of the lab report will provide a venue for students to independently explore the process of gasification and the potential of biomass as an alternative fuel.Taken together, this experiment exposes students to green engineering without having to create a semester-long independent course.