Solar Thermochemical Green Fuels Production: A Review of Biomass Pyro-Gasification, Solar Reactor Concepts and Modelling Methods

Stéphane Abanades, Sylvain Rodat and Houssame Boujjat
Additional contact information
Stéphane Abanades: Processes, Materials and Solar Energy Laboratory, PROMES-CNRS, 7 Rue du Four Solaire, 66120 Font-Romeu, France
Sylvain Rodat: Processes, Materials and Solar Energy Laboratory, PROMES-CNRS, 7 Rue du Four Solaire, 66120 Font-Romeu, France
Houssame Boujjat: CEA-LITEN Solar and Thermodynamic Systems Laboratory (L2ST), F-38054 Grenoble, France

Energies, 2021, vol. 14, issue 5, 1-33

Abstract: This paper addresses the solar thermochemical conversion of biomass or waste feedstocks based on pyro-gasification for the clean production of high-value and energy-intensive fuels. The utilization of solar energy for supplying the required process heat is attractive to lower the dependence of gasification processes on conventional energy resources and to reduce emissions of CO 2 and other pollutants for the production of high-value chemical synthetic fuels (syngas). Using concentrated solar energy to drive the endothermal reactions further allows producing more syngas with a higher gas quality, since it has not been contaminated by combustion products, while saving biomass resources. The solar-driven process is thus a sustainable and promising alternative route, enabling syngas yield enhancement and CO 2 mitigation, thereby potentially outperforming the performance of conventional processes for syngas production. This review presents relevant research studies in the field and provides the scientific/technical knowledge and background necessary to address the different aspects of the solar gasification process. An overview of the available solar concentrating technologies and their performance metrics is first introduced. The solar gasifier concepts and designs that were studied from lab to industrial scale are presented, along with their main benefits and limitations. The different management strategies proposed to deal with solar energy variations are also outlined, as well as the major pilot-scale applications and large-scale system level simulations. A specific emphasis is provided on the spouted bed technology that appears promising for the gasification process. Finally, the main modeling approaches of pyro-gasification and kinetics for simulation of gasifiers are described. This study thus provides a detailed overview of the efforts made to enhance the thermochemical performance of solar-assisted biomass gasification for synthetic fuel production.

Keywords: solar pyrolysis–gasification; synthetic fuels; syngas; biomass; waste conversion; solar reactor; spouted bed (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/5/1494/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/14/5/1494/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:14:y:2021:i:5:p:1494-:d:513349

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().