3.5 Summary and Final Tasks

Summary

There are several potential crops that can be utilized for combustion and gasification. These include energy crops, crop residues, forest residues, and process wastes. These can be utilized in both combustion processes and gasification processes. For gasification, we looked at several factors:

1. gasification process and chemistry
2. gasifier design and operation
3. syngas cleaning
4. syngas utilization to make a variety of products

Biobased energy and chemical products discussed in the lesson include:

1. heat and power
2. hydrogen
3. F-T hydrocarbon fuels
4. alcohols
5. biochemical and biopolymers.

Lesson Objectives Review

By the end of this lesson, you should be able to:

• explain how wood was used historically to produce heat and electricity;
• evaluate the difference between combustion and gasification, and explain how design features differ depending on the process;
• evaluate how pyrolysis is different from gasification;
• describe the utilization of products from gasification versus pyrolysis, including how the processing of products differs.

References

Schobert, H.H., Energy and Society: An Introduction, 2002, Taylor & Francis: New York, Ch. 4-6.

Wang, L., Biological Engineering, North Carolina A&T University, BEEMS Module C1, Biomass Gasification, sponsored by USDA Higher Education Challenger Program, 2009-38411-19761, PI on project Li, Yebo.