Report on the workshop for Gasification Technologies: Deliverying the Potential

Thornley, P.; Harvey, A.; Jefferson, B.; Roddy, D.; Cozens, P.; Manson-Whitton, C.; Lim, M.T.

The SUPERGEN Bioenergy Hub aims to act as a focal point for engagement between industry, academia and other stakeholders to focus on research and challenges to increase the contribution of bioenergy to meet strategic environmental and energy security targets in a coherent, sustainable and cost effective manner. One of the key enabling technologies for the successful uptake of bioenergy is gasification, a thermochemical process where biomass is converted into a mixture of gases that can be further utilized to generate heat or power or for the synthesis of chemicals or fuels. This process is highly versatile, and is applied in many forms. In fact, the technology is so versatile that no process or design within the gasification field is superior or dominant over the other [1] [2]. The types of gasifiers include the fixed bed (downdraft or updraft) gasifiers, fluidized bed gasifiers, entrained flow gasifiers (EFG) and plasma gasifiers. In fact, the fluidized bed gasifier category could be sub-divided further into several categories, such as bubbling fluidized bed gasifier systems, circulating fluidized beds, dual fluidized beds, internally fluidized beds, and triple fluidized beds.