Abstract
Biomass gasification is especially interesting when it is applied to low-value agricultural residues. This approach is still not widely established, and modelling activities may offer some useful insights for its optimisation. However, due to the complexity of the process, most of the activity has focused on equilibrium models, which have limited reliability. In this work, we focused on the gasification of apple pruning residues in a spouted bed reactor. Spouted beds feature good mixing properties and high heat and mass transfer rates. Hence, they are suitable to process irregular biomass residues. Moreover, the low diffusional limitations result in a good applicability of the TGA data. We simulated gasification experiments with the commercial program Aspen Plus, including a simplified kinetic mechanism. The results confirm the validity of applying the TGA data to spouted beds, and shows that this simple kinetic scheme allows overcoming the limitations of more classic approaches. © 2019 ETA-Florence Renewable Energies.