Evaluation of the impact of biomass moisture content on the performance of the circulating fluidized bed gasifier

Maharshi Thakkar, Vishal Singh

Abstract


Bioenergy's contribution to global sustainable development has increased rapidly in recent years.  This study investigates the effect of biomass quality, specifically moisture content, on the performance of the Circulating Fluidized Bed Gasifier (CFBG).  Sugarcane bagasse with moisture contents of 8.3 wt.%, 15.1 wt.%, and 25.6 wt.% were used for the investigation.   Air is utilized as a gasification agent.  The equivalence ratios (ER) used in the study were 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5.  All testing conditions used a bed material composed of 60% sand and 40% raw dolomite by mass.  The system performance in terms of the effect of biomass moisture content on syngas composition, carbon conversion efficiency, syngas LHV, tar generated, cold gas efficiency, and gas yield were studied.  The results showed that increasing the moisture content in biomass reduced the reactor temperature by nearly 7-10% under the same operating circumstances.  As the moisture content increased from 8.3% to 25.6%, the hydrogen content in the syngas were decreased by nearly 3%, 3.5%, 2.9% and 2.6% for ER values of 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, and 0.5, respectively.  The biomass with the lowest moisture content of 8.3 wt.% had the highest syngas LHV of 4.6 MJ/m3 at the ER of 0.4, while the biomass with the highest moisture content of 25.6 wt.% had the lowest syngas LHV of 3.1 MJ/m3 at the ER of 0.2.  Carbon conversion efficiency, cold efficiency, and gas yields were all considerably affected by the rise in biomass moisture content.  Char and tar yields climbed with increasing biomass moisture content, reaching their peak for all employed ERs for biomass with a moisture level of 25.6 wt.%.

 

Received: 29 October 2025

Accepted: 01 December 2025

Published: 14 December 2025


Keywords


Biomass Gasification, Bagasse, Equivalence Ratio, Fluidized Bed

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DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21622/resd.2025.11.2.1759

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Copyright (c) 2025 Maharshi Thakkar, Vishal Singh

Renewable Energy and Sustainable Development

E-ISSN: 2356-8569

P-ISSN: 2356-8518

 

Published by:

Academy Publishing Center (APC)

Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport (AASTMT)

Alexandria, Egypt

resd@aast.edu