Performance and emissions of liquefied wood as fuel for a small scale gas turbine

Marco Buffi, Tine Seljak, Alessandro Cappelletti, Lorenzo Bettucci, Agustin Valera-Medina, Tomaž Katrašnik and David Chiaramonti

Applied Energy, 2018, vol. 230, issue C, 1193-1204

Abstract: This study investigates for the first time the combustion in a micro gas turbine (MGT) of a new bioliquid, a viscous biocrude, which is a liquefied wood (LW) produced via solvolysis of lignocellulosic biomass in acidified glycols. The test rig includes a modified fuel injection line, a re-designed combustion chamber and revised fuel injection positions. The main novelties of this work are: (1) producing of liquefied wood with pure ethylene glycol as a solvent, and methanesulfonic acid as a catalyst, to obtain a bio-crude with lower viscosity and higher lignocellulosics content than previous tested formulations; (2) upgrading raw liquefied wood by blending it with ethanol to further reduce the viscosity of the mixture; (3) utilizing a commercially available MGT Auxiliary Power Unit (APU) of 25 kW electrical power output, with notably reduced extent of adaptations to use the newly obtained fuel mixture. Fuel properties, and their impact on combustion performance using liquefied wood, are investigated by analyzing MGT performance and emissions response at different load and blend ratios. Emissions revealed that the presence of LW in the blends significantly affects CO and NOX concentrations compared to conventional fuels. CO roughly increased from 600 ppm (pure ethanol as fuel) to 1500 ppm (at 20 kW electrical power). The experimental study reveals that it is possible to achieve efficient MGT operation while utilizing high biocrude to ethanol ratios, but a number of adaptations are necessary. The achieved maximum share of liquefied wood in the fuel blend is 47.2% at 25 kW power output. Main barriers to the use of higher share of liquefied wood in these type of systems are also summarized.

Keywords: Bioliquid; Solvolysis; Liquefied wood; Gas turbine; Emissions; Combustion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626191831300X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:appene:v:230:y:2018:i:c:p:1193-1204

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/405891/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 405891/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.08.126

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Energy is currently edited by J. Yan

More articles in Applied Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().