An advanced biomass gasification technology with integrated catalytic hot gas cleaning: Part I. Technology and initial experimental results in a lab-scale facility

High tar contents and low carbon conversion levels are two major problems in traditional biomass gasification technologies. Based on our research results especially on the volatile–char interaction and catalytic tar reforming, an advanced biomass gasification technology integrated with catalytic hot gas cleaning has been developed to produce high quality clean fuel gas. A lab-scale pilot gasifier was constructed and employed to demonstrate this technology. The experimental results show that the technology could efficiently gasify biomass into a high-quality fuel gas at atmospheric pressure and temperatures below 1000 °C. The tar content in the gasification product gas could be reduced to well below 100 mg Nm−3 by using char-based hot gas cleaning catalysts.