Real time control of gasifiers to increase tolerance to biomass variety and reduce emissions
Gasifiers are currently not meeting performance expectations primarily due to tar production (impacting syngas quality), biomass variability and lack of standards over pretreatment methods. This multidisciplinary project, led by Professor Ian Watson seeks to overcome these technical and economic barriers by focussing on the energy requirements for biomass harvesting, developing better models of gasification processes for different biomass varieties and experimentally determining impacts of biomass variance and pretreatment options on gasifier performance. Importantly, instrumentation and control to minimise the tar formation and optimise the gasification process will be developed and coupled with techno-economic indicators of the systems. The research is composed of 7 interconnected work packages.
More information to follow shortly.