Bioresource Technology 102 (2011) 20682076

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Bioresource Technology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biortech

Gasication of palm empty fruit bunch in a bubbling uidized bed: A performance

and agglomeration study
Pooya Lahijani, Zainal Alimuddin Zainal
School of Mechanical Engineering, Engineering Campus, Universiti Sains Malaysia, 14300 Nibong Tebal, Penang, Malaysia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 12 August 2010
Received in revised form 27 September 2010
Accepted 28 September 2010
Available online 25 October 2010
Keywords:
Agglomeration
Fluidized bed
Gasication
Palm empty fruit bunch
Renewable energy

a b s t r a c t
Gasication of palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) was investigated in a pilot-scale air-blown uidized bed.
The effect of bed temperature (6501050 C) on gasication performance was studied. To explore the
potential of EFB, the gasication results were compared to that of sawdust. Results showed that
maximum heating values (HHV) of 5.37 and 5.88 (MJ/Nm3), dry gas yield of 2.04 and 2.0 (Nm3/kg), carbon
conversion of 93% and 85 % and cold gas efciency of 72% and 71 % were obtained for EFB and sawdust at
the temperature of 1050 C and ER of 0.25. However, it was realized that agglomeration was the major
issue in EFB gasication at high temperatures. To prevent the bed agglomeration, EFB gasication was
performed at temperature of 770 20 C while the ER was varied from 0.17 to 0.32. Maximum HHV of
4.53 was obtained at ER of 0.21 where no agglomeration was observed.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Nowadays, climate change mitigation and energy security are
driving the worldwide efforts to utilize biomass for renewable
and sustainable fuel and energy development. The growing demand for clean renewable energy and reducing dependency on
oil and fossil fuels promote the research for development of environmentally benign and efcient technologies which converts
biomass to bioenergy and biofuels.
In Malaysia, palm (Elaeis guineensis Jacq.) is the dominant agricultural crop. Currently, more than 3.88 million hectares of land
in Malaysia are under palm cultivation (Idris et al., 2010). Indonesia and Malaysia as the worlds leaders in palm oil industry provide
86% of the universal palm oil demand. However, palm cultivation is
not limited to these countries and its plantation has been established in the worlds most diverse tropical regions including
Colombia and Brazil (De Souza et al., 2010). Palm as the main
contributor to biomass resources in Malaysia has attracted considerable attention to fulll the both traditional and renewable energy
demands in a sustainable manner.
At present, around 368 palm mills are operating in Malaysia
that produce signicant amount of lignocellulosic biomass including palm empty fruit bunches (53%), palm mesocarp bre (32%)
and palm kernel shell (15%) (Baharaddin et al., 2009). Empty fruit
bunch (EFB) which is the empty husks left over after oil extraction
from palm fruit, is generated as a waste material from palm oil
Corresponding author. Tel.: +60 4 593 7788; fax: +60 4 594 1025.
E-mail address: mezainal@eng.usm.my (Z.A. Zainal).
0960-8524/$ - see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.biortech.2010.09.101

industries. Although, part of EFB is utilized as solid fuel in the

boilers to generate steam and electricity in palm processing mills
or used as organic fertilizer (De Souza et al., 2010), however, still
large quantities have no specic use. They are burnt in open air
which generates pollutants including dust and acid rain gases such
as sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides or dumped in the plantation.
The large amount of EFB generated in Malaysia can be utilized as a
potential lignocellulosic biomass source to generate energy and
power. Currently, there are some commercial plants to generate
power and fuel from EFB in Malaysia. BTG plant (Biomass
Technology Group) which deals with pyrolysis of 50 t/day of EFB
to produce bio-oil is one of these projects (Chuden website). Chubu
Electric Power is another project to generate power from EFB in
Malaysia. This power plant has been constructing two small-scale
(10,000 kW) power generation facilities that use 240,000 tonnes
EFB per year as fuel and currently the rst 10,000 kW facility of this
project has started its commercial operation (Maeda and Kamada,
2009). Although some industrial plants have been established to
convert oil palm lignocellulosic residues to valuable products or
energy, so far no commercial gasication plant utilizing biomass
has been registered in Malaysia.
Amongst various thermo-chemical and biochemical platforms
proposed for conversion of biomass to fuel and energy, biomass
gasication has gained lots of interests due to its high conversion
efciency. Typically, four major categories of gasiers including
xed bed, moving bed, uidized bed and entrained ow are applied
in gasication process. Fluidized bed gasiers have offered some
advantages over xed beds due to their excellent mixing and
gassolid contact which improves the reaction rate as well as

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conversion efciency (Warnecke, 2000; Xu et al., 2009). The reduced tar content and improved quality producer gas obtained in
uidized beds originates from the implemented bed materials in
uidized beds which act as heat transfer medium and tar cracking
catalysis (Alauddin et al., 2010; Schuster et al., 2001).
Various gasifying agents including air, steam, oxygen-steam,
airsteam, O2-enriched air and oxygenairsteam have been used
in uidized biomass gasication (Campoy et al., 2009). Although
use of oxygen or steam as the gasifying agent improves the quality
of producer gas in terms of heating value or H2 content, however
the high cost and energy consumption of O2 or steam generation
makes the process unfavorable for industrial applications
(Alauddin et al., 2010; Shen et al., 2008). Use of air-blown bubbling
uidized bed gasier to generate producer gas seems to be a suitable choice which improves the feasibility of the gasication process for industrial plants.
Although uidized bed gasication has been known as one of
the mature technologies to generate energy from coal, however
its application to biomass has faced frequent operational problems.
Agglomeration of the bed materials is one of the main issues involved in biomass uidized bed gasication. Lignocellulosic
biomass feedstock, especially those containing potassium, sodium
and alkali earth metals along with chlorine and sulfur in lesser extent create low melting ash within the bed (Fryda et al., 2008).
Such phenomenon forms sticky and glassy melt which causes the
agglomeration of the bed material. The growth of agglomerates
formed within the bed material can reduce the uidization tendency or even cease it and thus create serious problem (Bartels
et al., 2008).
The high potential of palm solid biomass residues to generate
fuel and energy boosts the importance of gasication plants
establishment in Malaysia. So far, too few researches have been
published regarding gasication of EFB in uidized beds. Current
research aims to investigate the gasication of EFB in a pilotscale air-blown bubbling uidized bed gasier. The effect of
various inuential process parameters on the quality of the producer gas was examined. The results obtained from gasication
of EFB were compared to that of sawdust as a common feedstock
for biomass gasication to explore the potential of this local biomass waste for future exploitations. The agglomeration behavior
observed in EFB gasication was studied through EFB ash analysis and some practical solutions to prevent this issue were
proposed.

2. Method
2.1. Feedstock materials and characterization
Palm empty fruit bunch (EFB) was obtained from a local palm
mill factory, Nibong Tebal. The fresh EFB with high moisture content of 4560 % was open-air dried at the ambient temperature
of 2830 C for 2 days. The dried feed was then crushed and ground
into the bers with a mean length of 26 mm. Sawdust with almost the same particle size as that of EFB was supplied from commercial sources.
To have a knowledge on the empirical formula and quantitative
energy content of the biomass fuels, ultimate and proximate analysis were carried out on EFB and sawdust samples. The results obtained are presented in Table 1. The lower HHV of EFB in
comparison to sawdust is probably attributed to the higher ash
content of EFB which counts for the inert content of the biomass.
Thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) was carried out on EFB and
sawdust sample using a TG analyzer model STDQ 600 at a heating
rate of 10 C/min under an air ow of 10 mL/min. A 15 mg of the
biomass sample was used in each TG experiment.

Table 1
Ultimate and proximate analysis of the biomass feedstock.
Proximate analysis (wt.%)

EFB

Sawdust

Moisture
Volatiles
Ash
Fixed carbon
HHV, MJ/kg (dry basis)

7.80
79.34
4.50
8.36
15.22

14.60
76.10
0.40
8.90
17.12

Ultimate analysis (wt.%)

Carbon
Hydrogen
Nitrogen
Sulfur
Oxygen (diff.)
Empirical formula
Stoichiometric air/fuel ratio kg/kg)

43.52
5.72
1.20
0.66
48.90
CH1.46O0.84
4.84

44.96
5.83
3.10
0.61
45.50
CH1.55O0.76
5.34

2.2. Experimental setup

An atmospheric air-blown bubbling uidized bed gasier with
the height of 1050 mm, internal diameter of 150 mm in the bed
zone and 270 mm in the freeboard was developed. Air was introduced into the gasier using a 0.75 kW blower through a bubble
cap-type distributer plate. The plate distributed the air into the
bed through 16 caps, each containing two horizontal holes with
diameter of 2 mm. The air velocity was adjusted to the desired value using a hot-wire anemometer (Tecpel, Taiwan). Silica sand with
the bulk density of 1620 kg/m3 and mean size of 600 lm was used
as bed material. The ground biomass was continuously fed into the
reactor through a screw feeder conveyer equipped with an inverter
to vary the feed rate. The feeding system was located 12 cm above
the distributer plate to create a good mixing of the feed and hot air.
The temperature of different operating zones of the gasier, gas
outlet stream and gasier external wall was monitored by several
type K thermocouples. The operated experimental setup is presented in Fig. 1.
At start up, the system was heated up to the desired temperature of 500 C inside the gasier using LPG for about 15 min. As
the temperature of the gasier reached to 500 C, the air ow rate
was varied based on the selected ER and the biomass screw feeder
was turned on at the desired rotational speed to provide a feeding
of 611 kg/h. It should be mentioned that the feeding rate to obtain
a desired ER was not the same for the EFB and sawdust due to the
difference in the stoichiometric air/fuel ratio of the biomass feedstock (See Table 1). Four gas samples were taken at the selected
temperatures for analysis. To avoid the pyrolysis of biomass inside
the screw feeder, a cooling water jacket surrounded the conveyor
and cooling water passed through it during the entire run.
2.3. Gas sampling and analysis methods
In order to obtain a clean producer gas, the outlet was sent to a
cyclone separator to remove ash and chars from the hot gas. The
producer gas was ared at the top of the cyclone separator, while
a part of it was sent to the gas sampling train. As illustrated in
Fig. 1, the gas sampling train consisted of a series of glass bottles
partially lled with cold water. The char and ash free gas was
passed through the bottles and nally through a chamber of silica
gel to remove any moisture that may exist in the gas stream. The
clean gas samples were collected in Tedlar gas sampling bags
(Cole-Parmer) for analysis using a Gas Chromotograph (GC). The
GC (Agilent technology, 4890) was equipped with a thermal conductivity detector (TCD) and a packed column (Carboxene 1000
(15 ft  1/8 inches, 80/100 mesh), Supelco, USA) to measure the
volume fraction of permanent gases. The initial oven temperature
was set at 35 C, and then it was increased to 210 C at a rate of

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Fig. 1. Schematic representation of the pilot-scale BFB gasier: 1, Mass ow controller; 2, blower; 3, variable frequency driver; 4, feeding hopper; 5, water cooled screw
feeding system; 6, uidized bed reactor; 7, particle holder; 8, cyclone; 9, temperature monitoring unit; 10, condensers; 11, ber lter; 12, silica gel; 13, gas charomatography.

20 C/min. The injector and detector temperatures were set at 150

and 220 C. Helium was used as the carrier gas at the rate of 45 mL/
min.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Thermogravimetric analysis
Thermal stability of EFB and sawdust was determined using
thermogravimetric analysis under air as oxidizing agent. The result of such investigation is projected in Fig. 2 (a) and (b) which
presents the weight loss curve (TG), derivative thermogravimetric
analysis (DTG) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) evolution proles as a function of reaction temperature for EFB and
sawdust. The thermal degradation of both lignocellulosic biomass
can be divided into three regions. The initial weight loss in the
range of 50100 C can be condentially attributed to the moisture drying. The second pronounced weight loss occurring at
220315 C for EFB and 240340 C for sawdust corresponds to
the decomposition of hemicellulose and cellulose found in the
structure of lignocellulosic biomass. It is worth noting that three
natural polymers of cellulose, hemicelluloses and lignin are the
basic constituents of all lignocellulosic biomass. It has been reported that lignin decomposition starts at low temperatures of
160170 C and this process prolongs at a low rate to 900 C.
Decomposition of hemicelluloses followed by cellulose which
counts for volatile fractions of biomass occurs at the temperature
range of 200400 C (Mohamed et al., 2010). Thus, the main devolatilization of the lignocellulosic samples takes place in the second stage. At the third stage, the devolatilization process slightly
continues to 430460 C for EFB and sawdust, probably due to the
degradation of lignin residues (Muradov et al., 2010). Consequently, the sample weights remained almost constant till
900 C and the low ash content of 5.8% and 0.4 % was obtained
for EFB and sawdust, respectively.
The DTG prole of the EFB and sawdust samples which corresponds to the region where the slope of TG curve is almost constant depicted three peaks. The rst small peak in both samples
corresponds to the removal of moisture. The main devolatilization
peak was observed at 268 C for EFB while, the sawdust sample

showed this peak at 318 C. The third peak at 422 and 450 C probably assigned to the decomposition of lignin in EFB and sawdust,
respectively. However, the intensity of this peak for EFB was not
as strong as sawdust which originates from the higher lignin content of sawdust in comparison to EFB. Such different behavior of
various lignocellulosic biomass in DTG analysis was also reported
by other researchers (Idris et al., 2010). No obvious weight loss
was observed beyond 422 and 450 C for EFB and sawdust as indicated by zero value of DTG.
DSC analysis gives an insight to the enthalpy change of
biomass samples in thermogravimetric process. From the DSC
thermogram, three decomposition stages were clearly observed
for both samples. The endothermic peaks at around 59 C correspond to the loss of water. Besides, two exothermic wide peaks
are clearly visualized for each sample. The strong exothermic
peak centered at 310 C is probably attributed to the decomposition of lignocellulosic compound and volatile matter to form char
in EFB sample. This peak appeared with a less intensity at 323 C
for sawdust. At temperatures above 430 C, the oxidative degradation of the samples occurred in which biomass directly combust to oxidation product mainly COx and H2O (Muradov et al.,
2010). All these exothermic signals of degradation correlate with
the mass loss of the samples as depicted by TG curves. The exothermic peaks of DSC associated with a reduction in the heat
capacity of the samples were probably due to the structural degradation and evolution of gas products such as CO2 and CO during
the oxidation process (Mall et al., 2006).
3.2. Effect of bed temperature
Bed temperature is one of the most important parameters
affecting all the chemical reactions involved in the gasication process. The effect of this parameter on the gasication performance
was studied in the range of 6501050 C with and increment of
100 C while the air ow rate was varied from 7.5 to 9.5 m3/h
and the feeding rate was in the range of 611 kg/h. Fig. 3(a) and
(b) show the variation of the producer gas composition with respect to the reaction temperature for EFB and sawdust. Such variations in the composition of the producer gas can be easily explained
by the improvement of the following endothermic reactions

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P. Lahijani, Z.A. Zainal / Bioresource Technology 102 (2011) 20682076

Fig. 2. TG/DTG and DSC analysis of (a) EFB and (b) sawdust using air at heating rate of 10 C/min.

involved in the gasication process with the rise of temperature

(Alauddin et al., 2010; Lv et al., 2004):

Cn Hm tar nH2 O $ n m=2H2 nCO

CH4 H2 O $ CO 3H2
CH4 H2 O $ CO2 4H2

Cn Hm tar $ m=2H2 nC

CH4 CO2 $ 2CO 2H2

D 206kJ=mol
D 165kJ=mol
D 247kJ=mol

1
2
3

Fig. 3 (a) and (b) clearly depict that increasing the bed temperature favored hydrogen production. As thermodynamically predicted, increasing the temperature from 650 to 1050 C promoted
the volume fraction of hydrogen from 7.3% to 12.4 % for EFB
whereas the H2 content in sawdust gasication improved from
6.1% to 19.5 %. Such remarkable increase in the H2 concentration
of the producer gas at elevated temperatures may originate from
promotion of endothermic methane steam reforming (1), (2) and
dry reforming reactions (3). Tar reforming and cracking reactions
can also lead to an increase in H2 and other combustible gas levels
due to the following reactions:

Cn Hm tar nC2 O $ m=2H2 2nCO

DH > 0
DH > 0

DH > 0

4
5
6

Besides, endothermic char gasication promotes at high temperatures that contribute to the high concentration of H2 through
endothermic watergas and Boudouard reactions as follow:

C H2 O $ CO H2
C CO2 $ 2CO

DH 131kJ=mol
DH 172kJ=mol

7
8

At low temperature, hydrogen evolution was probably controlled by exothermic watergas shift reaction:

CO H2 O $ CO2 H2

DH 41:98kJ=mol

The higher H2 concentration achieved in sawdust gasication

was probably due to the higher moisture content of the sawdust
(14.6%) in comparison to EFB (7.8%) which improves the reforming

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P. Lahijani, Z.A. Zainal / Bioresource Technology 102 (2011) 20682076

reforming reactions (1), (2) and methane dry reforming (3). Thus,
it seems there was a balance between CH4 production and consumption rate that kept the CH4 level constant even at elevated
temperatures.

3.2.1. Gasication performance

The effectiveness of the gasication process was evaluated in
terms of higher heating value of dry gas (HHV), dry gas yield (Y),
carbon conversion (gc) and cold gas efciency (g). The HHV of
the dry gas was determined considering volumetric percentage of
H2, CO and CH4 in the ue gas by the following equation (Xiao
et al., 2006):

HHV H2 %  30:52 CO%  30:18 CH4 %  95

 4:1868 MJ=Nm3

10

Fig. 4 (a) and (b) illustrate the effect of bed temperature on HHV
of the producer gas for EFB and sawdust. An increase of bed temperature from 650 to 1050 C signicantly improved the gas HHV
from 3.27 to 5.37 (MJ/Nm3) for EFB and 3.86 to 5.87 (MJ/Nm3)
for sawdust. As explained earlier, high temperatures enhance the
evolution of combustible gases especially H2 and CO which in turn
results in an increase in HHV of the producer gas.
The EFB and sawdust samples contained 1.2% and 3.1% nitrogen,
respectively, thus the relatively low nitrogen content of the biomass samples was ignored while calculating the dry gas yield
and just N2 content of air was considered in material balance to

Fig. 3. Effect of bed temperature on producer gas composition for (a) EFB and (b)
sawdust (ER = 0.25; Hbed = 17 cm).

reactions to yield more H2. Although high content of moisture in

the feedstock may negatively affect the energy balance and producer gas composition, however some amount of it in the biomass
improves the tar and char reforming reactions, especially at high
temperatures due to the endothermic nature of these reactions. Increase of the H2 level of the producer gas with biomass moisture
was also reported by (Narvaez et al., 1996). They observed that
increasing the pine sawdust moisture from 10% to 25 %, improved
the H2 content from 5% to 9% at 800 C.
It is well known that air gasication produces high CO2 concentration (Pinto et al., 2003). The results also revealed high concentration of CO2 at low temperatures and then a drastic decreased
at temperature above 850 C for both EFB and sawdust. At low
temperatures, CO2 is produced through watergas shift reaction
(9) but high temperature promoted its evolution via methane
reforming (2). However, the generated CO2 was consumed through
methane dry reforming (3), tar cracking (5) and Boudouard reaction (8) to yield more H2 and CO and lead to a sharp decrease in
CO2 level at temperatures above 850 C. The CO concentration of
the producer gas markedly increased from 11.5% to 20% and 15%
to 17.8% for EFB and sawdust in the investigated temperature
range. Therefore it could be inferred that higher temperature favored CO production. The highest CH4 concentration of 3.6% and
3.0% was achieved at 750 and 650 C for EFB and sawdust respectively, and then remained almost unchanged with increasing the
bed temperature. Methane evolution can occur at high temperatures due to the cracking of tar to CH4, CO and H2 (Skoulou et al.,
2008). The generated CH4 can be consumed through steam

Fig. 4. Effect of bed temperature on gasication output performance for (a) EFB and
(b) sawdust (ER = 0.25; Hbed = 17 cm).

P. Lahijani, Z.A. Zainal / Bioresource Technology 102 (2011) 20682076

obtain the dry gas yield based on ash-free biomass, Y (Xiao et al.,
2006):

Q a  0:79
W b 1  X ash  N2 %

11

where Qa is the ow rate of air (Nm3/h), Wb is the mass ow rate of

biomass (kg/h), Xash is the ash content in the feed and N2 % is the
volumetric percentage of N2 in the dry producer gas. Variations of
dry gas yield with respect to bed temperature are shown in Fig. 4
(a) and (b) for EFB and sawdust. Increase of the bed temperature
improved the dry gas yield by 50% for both EFB and sawdust. Such
increase in gas yield may originate from (i) promoted initial pyrolysis rate at high temperatures which increases the gas production (ii)
steam cracking and reforming of tars at high temperatures and (iii)
improvement of endothermic reactions of char gasication (7), (8)
(Pinto et al., 2003).
The carbon conversion was calculated on the basis of the volumetric percentage of CO, CO2 and CH4 in the producer gas (Xiao
et al., 2006):

gC

YCO% CH4 % CO2 %  12

 100%
22:4  C%

12

where C% is the mass percentage of carbon in the feed obtained

from the ultimate analysis of biomass. The result of carbon conversion calculation is presented in Fig. 4(a) and (b) for EFB and sawdust. As expected, high temperatures enhanced carbon conversion
efciency due to the improvement of watergas and Boudouard
reactions (7), (8) through which more carbon is converted to gaseous products. However, increase of the bed temperature to beyond
850 C did not enhance carbon conversion due to the reduction of
CO2 content despite CO production.
Cold gas efciency which is an indication of chemical energy of
the producer gas in comparison to that of fuel is dened as follow
(Xiao et al., 2006):

Hg  Y
%
Hb

13

where Hg (MJ/Nm3) and Hb (MJ/kg) represent the heating value of

the producer gas and biomass. Improvement of cold gas efciency
with increasing the bed temperature for EFB and sawdust is depicted in Fig. 4 (a) and (b). The highest cold gas efciency of 71%
and 72% was achieved at 1050 C for EFB and sawdust due to the
high dry gas yield and heating value.

2073

It is well understood that the characteristics of the gasication

process is highly affected by the physical, chemical and morphological properties of the lignocellulosic biomass (Alauddin et al.,
2010). In numerous biomass gasication researches, sawdust has
been used as an index to evaluate the performance of the system
in terms of producer gas heating value, carbon conversion efciency, dry gas yield and product distribution. In the current study,
such gasication performance indexes were compared between
EFB and sawdust. The results demonstrated the potential of EFB
as a locally available lignocellulosic biomass for gasication process. However, agglomeration was found as a crucial issue involved
in EFB gasication process at high temperatures.
3.2.2. Bed agglomeration
Agglomeration of the bed materials is the major concern in uidized beds. This problem is basically related to the content of the fuel
ash, type of the employed bed material and the operating temperature within the bed (Olofsson et al., 2002). Generally, the creation of
agglomerates within the bed materials originates from the reaction
of alkali salts found in some lignocellulosic biomass with silica sand
which is the common bed material in most gasication plants. This
reaction forms a low melting eutectic mixture (Basu, 2006). Such
phenomenon makes the sand particle surface sticky, at the same
time the capturing and deposition rate of ash which is generated
during the gasication process on the silica sand surface increases.
This process improves clustering tendency of the sand particles and
deteriorates the uidization and mixing condition in the bed and
generates hot spot within the bed which consequently leads to sintering and agglomeration (Arvelakis et al., 2003). Agglomeration of
the bed materials causes deuidization which is detected by
remarkable pressure drop and temperature segregation over the
bed (Olofsson et al., 2002). Fig. 5 shows the bed temperature prole
during the gasication and deuidization process. As observed in
this Fig. after 60 min of feeding, the deudization occurred which
caused a poor mixing of the bed materials and created an inhomogeneous and increased bed temperature prole.
The main elements in biomass that create eutectics are potassium and sodium in the form of K2O and Na2O and potassium is
more damaging than sodium. The tendency of a biomass to sintering is indicated by the two following parameters (Basu, 2006):

K2 O Na2 O
> 1 and
SiO2

K2 O Na2 O
> 0:34
HHV

Gasification onset

Bed sintering formation

Fig. 5. The temperature prole along the agglomeration (ER = 0.25; Hbed = 17 cm).

14

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P. Lahijani, Z.A. Zainal / Bioresource Technology 102 (2011) 20682076

The biomass sintering tendency is severe when the fuel constituents exceed these boundary conditions.
The ash chemical compositions of the two implemented
biomass and a mixture of EFB ash and sand which was formed at
1050 C are summarized in Table 2. The XRF analysis of the samples clearly shows the high content of K2O in EFB (44%) in comparison to sawdust (4.5%) which was probably the main cause of
agglomeration. Besides both of the mentioned boundary conditions in the above correlation are extremely exceeded for EFB
which is an indication of severe sintering within the bed. The
chemical composition of the agglomerated silica sand covered with
EFB ash was also determined using XRF analysis. The result of the
analysis is presented in Table 2. Generally, SiO2 is the dominant
compound in silica sand which constitutes more than 95% of the
sand structure, but high K2O content (26%) of the agglomerated
sand further conrms the damaging effect of this compound and
formation of K2OSiO2 eutectics inside the bed. Chlorine (Cl) has
also been reported as one of the ash constituent which plays a
key role on the agglomeration development. This element along
with potassium creates KCl which is stable at high temperatures
and improves potassium devolatalization. Such minerals go
through phase transformation and form y ash particles that can
react with the bed materials and cause agglomeration within the
bed (Arvelakis et al., 2003). The XRF analysis of the EFB ash revealed the presence of 5.30% Cl in this sample while this element
constitutes only 0.19% of sawdust ash. Thus the higher Cl content
of EFB in comparison to sawdust may also boost the sintering effect
of this biomass. On the contrary, sawdust contains high level of
MgO (24%) which is effective to reduce agglomeration. MgO has
been found as an effective compound to alter the low temperature
eutectics of feedstock (Paisley, 2001). Agglomeration was not observed in sawdust gasication unless the bed temperature was
raised to above 1000 C.
To date, numerous investigations have been carried out on bed
agglomeration in uidized bed. However, this phenomenon is not
so far adequately understood as it is originated from some complex
interactions between various compounds. It cannot be simply related to the ash components of the fuel or bed material. But several
alternatives have been proposed in the literatures which effectively reduce the agglomeration tendency:

3.2.2.1. Use of alternative bed materials. Addition of some refractory

elements such as magnesium, iron, calcium and aluminum in the
form of MgO, Fe2O3, CaO and Al2O3 to the K2OSiO2 repress the
agglomeration tendency through the formation of high temperature compounds (Olofsson et al., 2002). Some other materials
including dolomite (CaMg(CO3)2), limestone (CaCO3), calcite (crystalline form of CaCO3), feldspar (KAlSi3O8NaAlSi3O8CaAl2Si2O8)
and soils containing kaolin (Al2Si2O5(OH)4) which could be directly
used as bed material or bed additives effectively reduce the bed
agglomeration potential (Basu, 2006).

3.2.2.2. Co-ring of the biomass with other fuel. The biomass with
high alkali content can be co-red with another fuel which contains less alkali or is rich in transition metals. Thus, the overall alkali content of the mixed fuel is reduced or a eutectic mixture with
high melting point is created. For example, co-ring of biomass
with kinds of coal whose ash contains high amount of sulfur

Table 2
XRF analysis of biomass ash samples.
Ash basis (wt.%)

Na2O
MgO
Al2O3
SiO2
P2O5
SO3
Cl
K2O
CaO
TiO2
MnO
Fe2O3
NiO
CuO
ZnO
Br
Rb2O
SrO
ZrO2
BaO
PbO

EFB

Sawdust

Mixture of sand and glue of EFB

0.55
4.80
0.97
27.0
3.60
2.70
5.30
44.0
8.00
0.08
0.11
3.00
0.01
0.039
0.092
0.018
0.12
0.03
Trace

Trace

0.41
24
4.80
51
0.33
1.70
0.19
4.50
4.20
6.70
0.049
0.88
Trace
Trace
0.11

0.017
0.029
0.024
0.66
Trace

0.30
3.30
2.30
55
2.50
0.56
0.14
26
6.30
0.085
0.11
3.10
Trace
0.037
0.016

0.058
0.026
0.012

Fig. 6. Effect of ER on (a) producer gas composition of EFB (b) EFB gasication
output parameters (c) product distribution of EFB (T = 770 20 C; Uair = 0.3 m/s;
Hbed = 17 cm).

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converts K2O in biomass to K2SO4 with high melting point of

1069 C and thus reduces the agglomeration risk (Basu, 2006; Olofsson et al., 2002).
3.2.2.3. Reducing the bed material size. Large bed materials which
need higher minimum uidization velocity and offer lower specic
surface area in compression to small bed particles may contribute
to agglomerate formation in beds (Bie et al., 2009; Olofsson et al.,
2002).
3.2.2.4. Pretreatment of fuels. Processing of fuels before feeding to
the uidized bed could be helpful in reducing the damaging alkali
content of fuels. In Denmark, barley straw are left in farming elds
over the winter and then cut off in spring. This process leaches the
alkali especially potassium available in straw (Bakker and Jenkins,
2003).
3.2.2.5. Reducing the bed temperature. It has been found that high
bed temperature is the most important cause of agglomeration.
At elevated temperatures, the damaging compounds, especially
Na and K contribute in larger amounts in formation of eutectics
and can lead to rapid growth of agglomeration within the bed. Besides, size of the formed agglomerates is larger at high temperatures (Olofsson et al., 2002).
Investigating the effect of temperature on gasication performance showed that the reaction temperature should be maintained at the highest possible value to obtain the best results.
However, formation of agglomerates at high temperatures during
EFB gasication put an upper limit on the gasication temperature.
Based on the above discussion and considering the inuential effect of bed temperature on the undesired agglomeration phenomenon, it was planned to perform the EFB gasication experiments
at temperatures below 800 C to ensure the lack of any agglomeration may create in gasication process.

the range of 611 kg/h. Fig. 6(a) shows the variation of the producer gas composition with respect to ER. As observed in this
Fig., increasing the ER from 0.17 to 0.21 improved the CO, CH4
and CO2 level of the producer gas and then further increase of ER
to 0.32 hindered CO and CH4 production while CO2 level continuously increased. At high ERs, more air is supplied into the gasier
and high degree of combustion occurs that improves char burning
to produce CO2 at the expense of combustible gases such as CO, H2
and CH4. It was realized that the ER of 0.21was the optimum value
in the studied range where the composition of CO, H2, CH4 and CO2
were 16.62%, 5.55%, 4.31% and 19.24%, respectively.
Fig. 6(b) presents the effect of ER on the producer gas HHV, dry
gas yield, carbon conversion and cold gas efciency. As expected,
the maximum HHV of 4.53 was achieved at ER of 0.21 which corresponds to the high content of combustible gases especially CH4.
Increasing the ER to beyond 0.21 was disadvantageous for gas
HHV due to the dilution of the producer gas by N2 which in turn
results in the gas low energy content. However, an increasing trend
was observed for carbon conversion, dry gas yield and cold gas efciency along with raising the ER. The maximum carbon conversion
efciency of 71.3%, cold gas efciency of 39% and dry gas yield of
1.76 (Nm3/kg) was obtained at ER of 0.32.
Generally, selection of the suitable ER is somehow depended on
the desired properties of the producer gas. A product gas with high
heating value is usually obtained at low ER, which was 0.21 in the
current study. In cases where low tar content of producer gas is desired, ER should be increased to about 0.30.4 to lower the tar content of the gas.
The results of EFB gasication were compared to the ndings of
other researchers on biomass gasication in air-blown uidized
beds. The result of such survey is projected in Table 3. Although,
the obtained result from EFB gasication was not so outstanding
in comparison to other common biomass, however it demonstrates
the potential of this locally available biomass for gasication
purposes.

3.3. Effect of ER
3.4. Product Distribution and Mass Balance
To study the effect of ER on gasication performance, this
parameter was varied in the range of 0.170.32 while the bed temperature was around 770 20 C. To achieve the selected ERs, the
air ow rate was kept at a constant value to have a small effect
on gas residence time and the biomass ow rate was changed in

Mass balance was performed for the input and output streams
of the gasication process, based on the results obtained in Section 3.3. The process input stream consisted of dry biomass fuel,
dry air and water (moisture) naturally presented in the biomass

Table 3
A comparison of the results on biomass gasication in air-blown uidized beds.
Feedstock

Bed temperature

Bed material

Gasication output parameters

References

EFB

T: 770 20 C

Silica sand

(Current study)

Rice husk

T: 600830 C

Alumina sand

Pine sawdust

T: 790800 C

Silica sand

Wood chips
Olive kernel
Rice husk
Pine sawdust + coal + plastic waste

T:
T:
T:
T:

Silica sand
Olivine
na
Dolomite

Wood sawdust

T: 750 C

Silica sand

Cedar wood

T: 700 C

Rh/CeO2/SiO2

Coconut coir

T: 900 C

na

HHV (MJ/m3 dry gas): 4.53

Carbon conversion:71%
Gas yield (m3 gas/kg biomass): 1.76
Cold gas efciency: 40 %
HHV (MJ/m3 dry gas): 5.03
Carbon conversion: 76 %
Gas yield (m3 gas/kg biomass): 1.05
LHV(MJ/m3 gas): 6.3
Gas yield (m3 gas/kg biomass): 2.1
LHV (MJ/m3 gas): 4.74
LHV (MJ/m3gas): 6.54
LHV (MJ/m3gas): 5.456.40
LHV (MJ/m3gas): 48
Gas yield (m3gas/kg biomass): 1.55
LHV (MJ/m3gas): 4.97
Carbon conversion: 87.1%
Gas yield (m3 gas/kg biomass): 2.99
Cold gas efciency: 56.9%
Carbon conversion: 99 %
Cold gas efciency: 82 %
LHV (MJ/m3gas): 2.38
Gas yield (mol gas/kg biomass): 2.95

na: not available.

733 C
750 C
700800 C
850 C

Mansaray et al. (1999)

Narvaez et al. (1996)

Lim and Alimuddin (2008)
Skoulou et al. (2008)
Wu et al. (2009)
Aznar et al. (2006)
Cao et al. (2006)

Asadullah et al. (2003), Tomishige et al. (2004)

Moghadam and Alias (2009)

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P. Lahijani, Z.A. Zainal / Bioresource Technology 102 (2011) 20682076

and air. While, for the output stream dry producer gas, water
(moisture) presented in the gas, char and tar were considered.
Moisture content of the air was determined using psychrometric
chart. In order to estimate the moisture content of the producer
gas, it was assumed that the gas was saturated with water vapor
[Stoichiometric, mass, energy]. Thus, the saturated vapor pressure
of water at dry bulb temperature and pressure of 1 atm was used to
determine the water content of the outlet gas stream. The product
distribution as a function of ER is presented in Fig. 6(c). The total
mass balance was almost between 96% and 98 % due to the output
experimental losses.
4. Conclusions
EFB gasication was conducted in an air-blown uidized bed.
The gasication performance was and the EFB gasication results
were compared to that of sawdust. The results explored the great
ability of EFB for gasication purposes. However, the agglomeration evolved at high temperatures was the main concern in EFB
gasication, while such behavior was not observed in sawdust gasication. As a solution, the bed temperature was lowered in EFB
gasication thus the agglomeration was prevented within the
bed. The results achieved in EFB gasication were comparable to
sawdust which demonstrates the ability of this locally available
biomass for bioenergy production plants.
Acknowledgements
The nancial support provided by Universiti Sains Malaysia
(School of Mechanical Engineering) as a research grant (No.
8032045) is gratefully acknowledged.
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