Model development and thermodynamic analysis of biomass co-gasification using Aspen plus®

Gasification is the process of producing syngas with acceptable heat value from a feedstock. Co-gasifying biomass and using syngas thus produced reduce the net CO2 emission as biomass is effectively CO2 neutral. An Aspen plus (R) model for co-gasification of Indian lignocellulosic biomass is developed and validated against available experimental results. Performance of co-gasification as obtained from this developed model is also assessed by energy and exergy efficiencies of the process. Variations of these two efficiencies with gasification parameters are also reported. Results show that best performance of gasification may be obtained for rice straw with sugarcane bagasse energetically and wheat straw with sugarcane bagasse exergetically. The methodology and results may help selecting Indian biomass for co-gasification with further experimental investigations to decide the suitable one(s). [GRAPHICS]