 Assessment of cow dung as a supplementary fuel in a downdraft biomass gasifierProkash C. Roy, Amitava Datta and Niladri Chakraborty Renewable Energy, 2010, vol. 35, issue 2, 379-386 Abstract: A model of downdraft gasifier has been described considering thermodynamic equilibrium of species in the pyro-oxidation zone and kinetically controlled reduction reactions in the reduction zone. It is found that the sole use of cow dung as the gasifier fuel is not technically feasible. This is due to very low heating value of the producer gas with much carbon leaving the gasifier as char. However, cow dung can be used as a supplementary fuel blended with a conventional woody biomass, like sawdust. The increased fraction of cow dung in the fuel blend renders the gasification process less efficient, when the gasifier is operated at a particular equivalence ratio. Both the producer gas production rate and its heating value reduce with the increase in the cow dung content in the biomass fuel blend, leading to an overall reduction in the gasifier conversion efficiency. It is observed that an increase in the cow dung content from 0 to 90% in the blended fuel reduces the heating value by 46.8% and the conversion efficiency by 45%. The use of cow dung in between 40 and 50% by mass in the fuel mix would result in an overall fuel economy. Keywords: Biomass gasifier; Kinetic model; Cow dung; Fuel blend (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:35:y:2010:i:2:p:379-386 DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2009.03.022 Access Statistics for this article Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier |
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