(411g) Steam Reforming of Tar From a Biomass Gasification Process On CaO/MgO/NiO Catalysts

Gas cleaning and conditioning are currently among the major areas of study in the field of biomass gasification. The main techniques involved in gas cleaning are physical, mechanical, granular beds, catalytic and thermal cracking methods. The hot gas clean-up is a more preferable technology because energy loss is minimised by avoiding cooling of raw product gas. The objective of this study was to develop a novel and low-cost method to synthesis nanosized MgO, CaO and NiO catalysts to breakdown toluene, a model tar compound for tar removal in biomass catalytic gasification.  Catalysts were tested in fixed-bed reactor for biomass tar steam reforming, toluene was chosen as a tar model compound. Different analytical techniques were used to characterize the synthesized nanomaterials. The synthesized nanomaterials were used as catalysts to remove tar by selectively reforming the unwanted hydrocarbons products in the biomass-derived raw syngas. Investigations were conducted on solid metal oxides catalyst by using bulk CaO, MgO and NiO catalysts resulted in higher toluene conversion and also effect on H₂ yield, CO and CO₂ selectivity.