Performance of Gasifier Chamber Unit by using Agricultural Waste

Abstract

Malaysia projected to produce 16.8 billion tonnes of biomass annually was a big challenge for waste issue. These huge numbers eventually lead the country to come up with a specific abundance of agricultural waste. Since the world is moving towards a greener earth, the act of dumping the waste in landfills or resorting it to open burning seems irresponsible and leaving the nation with no choice but nation must be proactive to rise about the issue to avoid it happens in future continuously. The process of gasification will help to address the matter, taking palm oil as feedstock which will turn into syngas is one of the alternative solutions as alternative fuel that benefit to nation. The objective of this study is to establish the properties fuel of syngas database and to determine the capability of the numerical simulation of the flow in the gasification system via computational approach in a gasifier chamber unit specifically to understand the flow inside the chamber. In addition, to facilitate the properties fuel syngas data, the analysing using the proximate analysis characters of feedstock is used. Second, CFD simulation is carried out using ANSYS Fluent software and different swirler angle such as 30º, 40º and 50º are used to observe the effect of using the swirler in chamber unit. Five agricultural waste was obtained as samples of palm kernel shell, ground coconut shell, Torrefied rubber seed, empty fruit bunch and wood chips. At 18.53, 18.00, 17.94, 18.37 and 17.39 MJ/kg respectively, all biomass samples obtained a specific high heating value test as fuel properties characteristics. From computational analysis, CFD capable to determine the flow in gasifier chamber unit. Swirler angle of 40° come out as one of the ideal angles implemented for gasifier chamber unit. It produced a fairly good result in gasification residuals and static temperature distribution.