Performance and chemical composition of waste palm cooking oil as scrubbing medium for tar removal from biomass producer gas

摘要

Producer gas, a product of biomass gasification contains not only combustible gases but also tar which is an unwanted and detrimental substance to downstream applications. This paper presents a study on tar removal using laboratory prepared waste palm cooking oil (LWPCO), restaurant collected waste palm cooking oil (CWPCO), diesel oil and water as scrubbing mediums. The experiment succeeded in removing class 4 tar using diesel oil and CWPCO as scrubbing mediums. The unsaturated hydrocarbons (oleic and linoleic acids) present in the CWPCO resulted in the highest tar removal efficiency of 86% (excluding benzene). Besides utilizing unused residual material, application of CWPCO for tar removal can reduce operational cost. Combination of CWPCO with activated carbon provides a high quality producer gas with tar content of 0.022 gm(n)(-3) and tar removal efficiency of 98%, which can be safely used in internal combustion engines (ICE). (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier B.V.