Feasibility study of napier grass and oil palm frond blend pellets for syngas production

To date, Malaysia is mainly relying on the fossil fuels for electricity generation and it is expected that the energy demand will increase continually and soon facing the shortage of fossil fuel. Biomass is identified as one of the key resources for electricity generation due to strategic location and climate condition of Malaysia. Napier grass (NG) should be considered as alternative fuel due to its desirable characteristics such as growth and carbon neutrality. Oil palm frond (OPF) is found that has contributed to major portion of other oil palm residues in Malaysia. Thus, this study is aimed to investigate the feasibility of NG-OPF blends with variety blending ratio (0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75, 1) for syngas production in a fluidised bed reactor (54 mm in internal diameter and 370 mm in height) at temperature (850 °C) and equivalence ratio (ER) (0.2) via gasification process. As a result, single OPF feedstock has obtained higher quality syngas (H2: 14.39 vol%, CO: 32.58 vol%) and higher heating value (5.49 MJ/Nm3). However, NG:OPF (50 : 50) was found to obtained a higher H2 composition (13.04 vol%) and higher HHV of gas product (3.42 MJ/kg) as compared to NG-OPF blends (0.25, 0.75). The optimum carbon conversion efficiency, CCE (86.08 %) was found in NG-OPF (25 : 75). NG is found feasible to blend with OPF.