Wet Scrubber Technology for Controlling Biomass Gasification Emissions

摘要

Small-scale (less than 20 MW) biomass-fueled power plants offer great potential for low-cost, efficient energy generation. Biomass gasification is a thermal destruction process which produces synthetic gas as an end-result. During gasification, various pollutants may be produced depending on the make-up of the original biomass material. These pollutants can be captured by use of existing air pollution control technologies. As the first phase of a project to develop a 12 MW biomass-fueled power plant, a pilot system was developed to evaluate using wet scrubber and wet electrostatic precipitator technology to control emissions from a biomass gasifier. The gasifier used rice hulls and wine residue as the feedstock. The pollutants of interest in this application were sub-micron particulate matter, tars, ammonia, and sulfur compounds. The concentrations of particulate matter and tars are greater than normally encountered in air pollution control systems which resulted in special design considerations. The results of the pilot plant test show that wet scrubbing technology can be used to effectively control air emission from biomass gasifiers.