Preliminary Study of Pyrolysis and Gasification of Biomass and Thermosetting Resins for Energy Production

The gasification of the biomass is an efficient way to employ the renewable source for the production of electric power. Nevertheless, the water content in the biomass can be very high and the performances of a power plant that exploits the syngas produced can be negatively affected. The mixing of thermosetting resin with the biomass in order to increase the performances even with high moisture of the biomass is evaluated in a two stage gasifier. An Aspen Plus model that simulates the sub-processes of the gasification is implemented. The equations that describe the pyrolysis and the gasification are regressed with the data available in literature. The power production obtained with a mixture of 30% of thermosetting resins and biomass with 65% of water is higher than the ones obtained with biomass with 45% of water.