Hi Martin; I can think of two reasons right away. 1: Direct combustion of biomass is very hard on boiler tubing. Very "corrosive" compared to a gas fired boiler. This limits one severely in boiler design. For instance -- here in Belize direct combustion biomass furnace burns bagasse. The result is so "dirty" that only fire tube boiler prove satisfactory. This limits steam quality to a max of 850F and 400 PSI. A gas fired boiler would be of modern water tube design -- produce steam at 1400 F and 5000 PSI if so required. 2: Greater furnace efficiency. Standard combustion furnaces do not burn as efficiently as a gasifier process -- plus all that dirty smoke and fly ash. However -- a good person to answer the above points is John Irving at Burlington Electric, Vermont. They ran for years a conventional combustion furnace on wood chips for power generation -- and have lately converted to gasification process. Do not know if John is still on this list -- but have been missing his reports. Peter Singfield / Belize At 02:02 PM 1/31/2001 +0100, you wrote: >Dear all, > >I have been following your discussion for a while and there is one thing >I can hardly understand. Some of you want to gasify biomass to burn the >gas for heat generation for a steam cycle. I can't see the advantage >compared to biomass combustion. So, why do you want to gasify the >biomass previously? > >Regards >Martin Adorni >The Gasification List is sponsored by >USDOE BioPower Program http://www.eren.doe.gov/biopower/ >and PRM Energy Systems http://www.prmenergy.com > >Other Sponsors, Archives and Information >http://www.nrel.gov/bioam/ >http://www.crest.org/renewables/gasification-list-archive >http://solstice.crest.org/renewables/biomass-info/gasref.shtml >http://www.crest.org/renewables/biomass-info/ >http://www.crest.org/renewables/biomass-info/carbon.shtml > The Gasification List is sponsored by USDOE BioPower Program http://www.eren.doe.gov/biopower/ and PRM Energy Systems http://www.prmenergy.com Other Sponsors, Archives and Information http://www.nrel.gov/bioam/ http://www.crest.org/renewables/gasification-list-archive http://solstice.crest.org/renewables/biomass-info/gasref.shtml http://www.crest.org/renewables/biomass-info/ http://www.crest.org/renewables/biomass-info/carbon.shtml
