Carbonization of residual biomass from river maintenance using waste heat from gasification power plants

This work follows the study presented in Stockholm at the 2017th EUBCE titled: “The Energetic Recover of Biomass from River Maintenance: the REBAF Project”. This previous work focused on the multidisciplinary approach to river maintenance in order to create more resilient systems together with the production of renewable energy. One of the outputs of the preliminary work presented was the distinction of the biomass from river maintenance into two major groups: suitable for gasification and not suitable for gasification. It was necessary to determine suitable and sustainable solutions for the energy recovery of both these groups. The final idea is discussed in this work, it consists in having an integrated system as depicted in Figure 2. The gasifier-engine system is fed with the higher quality biomass; it provides electrical power and hot exhaust gases that are used for the pyrolysis of the low-quality feedstock. The purpose of the pyrolysis reactor is to produce biochar to be used together with clay and other aggregates to produce highly porous, carbon negative, building materials. In this work a prototype reactor was assembled and tested using herbaceous biomass. Several configurations, in terms of exhaust gas temperature and biomass residence time were tested. Results showed the capability of coupling gasification and pyrolysis into integrated systems to increase the overall sustainability of the processes. On the other hand, char quality is strongly affected by the way this interaction is performed due to the quick cool down of the exhaust gases when the connection lines are not properly insulated.