Grant: Applied Research Tools and Instruments Grants

Small scale (micropower) distributed electricity generation and biomass power plants are becoming more popular. Waste biomass (wood, crop waste or other burnable organic matter) is widely available at zero or negative cost. The cheapest way to produce micropower from biomass is gasification; the biomass is burned in a restricted amount of air so that it burns to form the carbon monoxide and hydrogen mixture known as syngas (carbon dioxide and water would be formed if the biomass is given all the air it needs for complete burning). Syngas could be burned in a regular spark ignition engine which is part of a genset. In fact, the syngas engine gensets that have been recently installed in developing countries like India and China have proven that small scale electricity generation (under 50 kW) from syngas engine gensets is much cheaper than electricity from diesel gensets. In such installations, the syngas is made from wood or rice husk. Such gasifiers and syngas engines require periodic maintenance and cleaning and much labor is needed to replenish the fuel in the gasifier vessel. But a few months ago, an American company succeeded in inventing an automatically fed gasifier, reducing labor costs so that the syngas engine genset concept may now be suited to North American micropower generation needs. However, the only biomass that can, at present, be gasified in it is dry wood chips or commercial wood pellets which are the most expensive kinds of biomass. Therefore, this project's goal is to pelletize and gasify zero cost non-wood biomass such as agricultural wastes. Pelletization is essential so that the biomass will flow easily through the gasifier. An ongoing project at Lambton College has already proven that good quality pellets can be made from a blend of non-wood biomass and wood sawdust and effort is under way to reduce the proportion of wood in the pellet. Such pellets would be gasified and the syngas burned in the gasifier genset to make about 6 kW of electric power. The gasifier and genset would be instrumented so that gasification rates, gasifier energy performance and electricity production can be measured and recorded. The durability and reliability of the gasifer and engine will also be studied.