Autothermal CaO Looping Biomass Gasification for Renewable Syngas Production

Abstract

Biomass gasification is regarded as a promising alternative to fossil fuels for producing sustainable and clean value-added products. However, the challenges including low energy efficiency, CO₂ emission, and ash agglomeration significantly delay the deployment of the technology. Herein, we first proposed a novel autothermal CaO looping biomass gasification (Auto-CaL-Gas) technology, in which CaO-based materials react with flue gas with a high concentration of CO₂ (>30 vol %) to produce heat inside the gasifier, simultaneously providing energy for low-temperature biomass gasification using CO₂ as a gasification agent. Upon use of this concept the syngas production exhibited a significant increase from 0.21 kg/h to 0.90 kg/h in the Aspen simulation results and more than 3-fold improvement in the experimental results.