Original Articles
K. Arun and M. Venkata Ramanan
Abstract
closed top, 6 kWe, fixed, perforated bed, downdraft reactor had been designed, fabricated and was used to experiment the gasification of corn cob under forced air circulation mode. Producer gas composition, HHV of producer gas, specific gas generation, cold gas efficiency had been investigated by varying the equivalence ratio from 0.1 – 0.45. Studies revealed that corn cob could be gasified successfully. An equivalence ratio of 0.3 was observed to be optimal for it yielded maximum cold gas efficiency (62.83%), highest HHV of producer gas (4.58 MJm-3) associated with an optimal specific gas generation rate (2.12 m3 of gas/kg of corn cob). The CO2/CO of the producer gas at an ER of 0.3 was observed to be 0.907 and is the lowest among all ERs. Tar and particulates content has been experimentally determined as 0.81 gm-3 and 0.355 gm-3 respectively. Fuel bridging was inferred to be minimal as O2 content in the producer gas was zilch. Hence corn cob has been identified as a viable alternate fuel for gasification that could be used for decentralized power generation.