Optimisation of catalytic system for tar mitigation in biomass producer gas

The producer gas from biomass gasification is an upcoming power-generating technique for meeting the power requirements of the rural society. The performance of the biomass gasifier can be raised by mitigating tar in producer gas. Tar is highly carcinogenic and tends to condense at room temperature, which results in blocking and fouling of the downstream equipment. In this research, nano-structured SiO2-supported Ni pellets are used as catalysts to reduce the tar content in producer gas from a biomass gasifier. Further, Cerium (Ce) and Praseodymium (Pr) are reinforced with Ni–SiO2 pellets to improve the catalytic activity
for tar mitigation. The Taguchi methodology is employed to rank and predict the optimal catalytic factor among the catalyst weight, gas feed rate (GF) and bed temperature (BT) for the tar cracking. The experimentation is done according to the L9 design table and the mathematical model for tar concentration is developed with the adequacy (R2) of 99.93%. The optimal catalytic system with 9 g of Pr, 0.01 l/s GF and
775°C of BT has reduced the tar concentration from 27 to 0.17 mg/Nm3, i.e. the efficiency of tar mitigation achieved is around 99.3%.