Hydrogen-rich gas from catalytic steam gasification of biomass in a fixed bed reactor: Influence of particle size on gasification performance

The catalytic steam gasification of biomass was carried out in a lab-scale fixed bed reactor in order to evaluate the effects of particle size at different bed temperatures on the gasification performance. The bed temperature was varied from 600 to 900 °C and the biomass was separated into five different size fractions (below 0.075 mm, 0.075–0.15 mm, 0.15–0.3 mm, 0.3–0.6 mm and 0.6–1.2 mm). The results show that with decreasing particle size, the dry gas yield, carbon conversion efficiency and H2 yield increased, and the content of char and tar decreased. And the differences due to particle sizes in gasification performance practically disappear as the higher temperature bound is approached. Hydrogen and carbon monoxide contents in the produced gas increase with decreasing particle size at 900 °C, reaching to 51.2% and 22.4%, respectively.