Performance Evaluation of Wood Gasifier

Generating electrical energy through biomass has advantages besides achieving self-sustainability. Biomass is particularly useful for agriculture dependent economy nations like India. Energy conversion systems based on biomass are particularly interesting because biomass utilization effectively closes the carbon cycle. An experimental investigation on biomass based gasifier engine system of 35kVA capacity has been carried out for power generation application. Problems of cooling and cleaning hot and dirty gas from gasifier has been satisfactory solved by cooling and filtration system. The gasifier developed is observed to be operator friendly.The quality of gas is evaluated in terms of its composition, conversion efficiency and total particulate matter. Maximum output of power plant was obtained at combustion zone temperature of 850oC. The experimental investigations show that the percentage reduction in total particulate matter is 89.32%. The conversion efficiency of biomass gasifiers is found to be dependent on gasifier operating conditions and fuel properties. The optimum value of equivalence ratio was observed to be 0.3134 for achieving maximum gas conversion efficiency of a present gasifier configuration. Keywords: Biomass, gasification, producer gas, equivalence ratio, total particulatematter, conversion efficiency of gasifier