Comparative study of energy potential of mango pit as biomass with coconut shell Ginisyria & mixture in laboratory scale developed updraft gasifier

Abstract

Biomass energy is getting peak level attention from last few years in terms of improvement in technology to increase energy conversion efficiency. The world is facing energy issue this biomass energy can play vital role due to its abundant availability in different sectors such as domestic waste, agricultural waste, industrial waste etc. Many of the biomass contains a lot of energy and then it needs attention to be utilized in proper manner. One of the major technologies to produce energy from biomass is thermochemical conversion. Gasification is thermochemical conversion process ' is of much interest in which carbonaceous material is converted into different valuable products by application of heat in suitable designed unit. This study aims to develop 25 KW updraft gasifier (70% thermal efficiency) with gas cleaning unit for performance analysis of reactor by testing mango pit as new biomass material and its comparison with coconut shell ginisyria and mixture of biomass (50%,25%,25% coconut shell, mango shell & ginisyria respectively). Properties of feed materials such as ultimate and proximate analysis were done for each kind. Performance was analyzed in developed unit without packing plate vs. with packing plate (which was introduced about 609.6 mm above the grate in chamber) in terms of producer gas composition and its variation with equivalent ratio, lower heating . value (MJ/Nm3) of product gas for the said materials and their comparison. Results indicate that that producer gas can be generated from mango pit and its lower heating value was calculated as 3 3 5(MJ/Nm3) at equivalent ratio of 0.2while in comparison with others materials coconut shell has more energy contents while mixture has lowest energy contents among all. With increase m air velocity as ER approaches 0.25 LHV of product for all biomass materials was observed m reducmg trend .Overall performance of unit gives satisfactory results arc! from analysis it identify that mango pit is competitive candidate as biomass.