Search Results

The Technical University of Denmark, DTU, has designed, built and tested a gasifier [1, 8] that is fuelled with wood chips and achieves a 93% conversion efficiency from wood to producer gas. By combining the gasifier with an ICE and an electric generator a co-generative system can be realized that produces electricity and heat. The gasifier uses the waste heat from the engine for drying and pyrolysis of the wood chips while the gas produced is used to fuel the engine. To achieve high efficiency in converting biomass to electricity an engine is needed that is adapted to high efficiency operation using the specific producer gas from the DTU gasifier. So far the majority of gas engines have been designed and optimized for operation on natural gas. The presented work uses a modern and highly efficient truck sized natural gas engine to investigate efficiency, emissions and general performance while operating on producer gas compared to natural gas operation.

The Technical University of Denmark, DTU, has constructed, built and tested a gasifier [1, 11] that is fueled with wood chips and achieves a 93% conversion efficiency from wood to producer gas. By combining the gasifier with an internal combustion engine and a generator, a co-generative system can be realized that produces electricity and heat. The gasifier uses the waste heat from the engine for drying and pyrolysis of the wood chips while the produced gas is used to fuel the engine. To achieve high efficiency in converting biomass to electricity it necessitates an engine that is adapted to high efficiency operation using the specific producer gas from the DTU gasifier. So far the majority of gas engines of today are designed and optimized for SI-operation on natural gas.

About 2000 hours of gas engine operation with producer gas from biomass as fuel has been conducted on the gasification combined heat and power (CHP) demonstration and research plant, named “Viking” at the Technical University of Denmark. The plant and engine have been operated continuously and unmanned for five test periods of approximately 400 hours each. Two different control approaches have been applied and investigated: one where the flow rate of the producer gas is fixed and the engine operates with varying excess of air due to variation in gas composition and a second where the excess of air in the exhaust gas is fixed and the flow rate of produced gas from the gasifier is varying. It was seen that the optimal control approach regarding the gasifier operation resulted in engine operation with significant variation of the NOx emissions Producer gas properties and contaminations have been investigated.

The utilisation of producer gas - from thermal gasification of biomass - as a fuel for spark ignition gas engines is of vital importance to the ongoing effort of making biomass gasification a commercially feasible technology. Tests have been carried out with a 1.1 litre four-cylinder natural aspirated SI engine in conjunction with a two-stage gasifier with a nominal thermal input of 100 kW. The fuel-gas is produced from wood chips in order to get a CO2 neutral fuel for combined heat and power production. The producer gas has a very low tar and particulate content and high hydrogen content. As the gasifier was operated with varying fuel properties, engine tests were made with different fuel-gas compositions. The engine tests showed that producer gas has a power and efficiency advantage compared to natural gas when operating the engine at lean burn conditions. The engine was operated at air/fuel ratios varying from stoichiometric to extremely lean burn (λ>3).

Experiments have been conducted on a gas fueled spark ignition engine using natural gas and two hydrogen containing fuels. The hydrogen containing fuels are Reformulated Natural Gas (RNG) and a mixture of 50% (Vol.) natural gas and 50% (Vol.) producer gas. The producer gas is a synthetic gas with the same composition as a gas produced by gasification of biomass. The hydrocarbon emission, measured as the percentage of hydrocarbons in the fuel, which passes unburned through the engine, was for the mixture of natural gas and producer gas up to 50% lower than the UHC emissions using natural gas as fuel. The UHC emission from the experiments using reformulated natural gas was 15% lower at lean conditions. Furthermore, both hydrogen-containing fuels have a leaner lean burn limit than natural gas. The combustion processes from the experiments have been analyzed using a three-zone heat release model, which is taking the effect of crevices into account.

Engine experiments with a 0.964 l. DI diesel engine have been carried out applying mixtures of diesel and bitumen as fuel. These investigations showed that there is an increase in emissions of CO, NOx, PM1 and SOF2 as the share of bitumen in the fuel increases. Sampled PM from the exhaust gas from a 0.296 ltr. DI diesel engine was analysed for its contents of 16 specific PAH-compounds. The results showed that the emission of PAH in the exhaust gas was significantly lower for mixtures of bitumen/diesel than for mixtures of heavy-fuel-oil/diesel. Seven different components where detected. Analysis of soot deposits from the combustion chamber and of the crank case lubricant concerning magnesium, vanadium and nickel have been carried out. The results showed that 2-5% of the amount of metals in the injected fuel could be found in the engine lubricant. Only a small amount of magnesium and vanadium was detected in the soot.