Abstract
This work uses the open source thermodynamic tool Cantera® to model the biomass gasification process for high ash-content substrates (e.g. digestate). The ash fraction is described as the mixture of different chemical species in the feedstock. A suitable database is created for the ash description using the NASA 9 method (instead of the embedded NASA 7). The enthalpy change of the different species is computed as a function of temperature, accounting also for the species phase-change. The results are compared with the ones obtained with a simplified ash-model (50% SiO2 and 50% CaO, no phase-change). The same procedure is also applied using wood as feedstock (low ash-content). The results obtained using the data from the literature confirm the suitability of the approximated method for low ash-content feedstocks, but, when the model is applied to high ash-content feedstocks, the differences between the two investigated methods become appreciable, suggesting the use of the NASA 9 method for the ash modelling.