Syngas production from sugarcane leftover gasification integrated with absorption process for green liquid production

Abstract

The aim of research is to present favorable operating conditions for the clean syngas production from sugarcane leftover through the gasification process by using AspenPlus™ software. In order to obtain the suitable syngas for liquid fuel production, this process should be integrated with gas cleaning. The simulation was performed by comparing three gasifying agents, i.e., steam, air, and steam-air. To find favorable operating conditions that provide the highest syngas molar flow rate, the effect of operating conditions in gasifier was also examined. In addition, the possibility of syngas production operated under a thermal self-sufficient condition was studied. The gasification results showed that the syngas production significantly increases with the increase of temperature. The proper gasifying temperature for three processes is at 750 °C. When the maximum syngas molar flow rate was considered, it was found that the use of steam (at S/B of 0.6) and steam-air (at S/B of 0.8 and A/B of 0.04) in gasification can achieve this criterion. Both processes can provide syngas molar flow rate as ∼149 kmol/h. However, it was found that thermal self-sufficient operation is possible when air and steam-air are used as gasifying agent. The result indicated that syngas molar flow rate obtained from air gasification (at A/B of 1.309) is more than that from steam-air gasification (at S/B of 0.1 and A/B of 1.375). In order to obtain the cleaner production of syngas, the absorption process with capturing CO2 and H2S was studied via using monoethanolamine (MEA) as solvent. The optimal column pressure is 40 bars and the number of trays equals to 10. To obtain the H2S content below 0.1 mg/m3, the MEA molar flow rates are 325, 450, and 465 kmol/h for steam, air, and steam-air gasification processes, respectively. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd