Characterization of tar and soot formation for an improved co-gasification of black liquor and pyrolysis oil

Black liquor (BL) gasification is a proven process with very low tar generation at lower temperature than other entrained-flow biomass gasification processes. Recently, BL gasification technology was further expanded to increase feedstock flexibility by co-gasifying pyrolysis oil (PO) with BL. Economic advantage was shown by a techno-economic study. Our previous lab-scale studies using a thermo-gravimetric analyzer and a flat flame burner showed high char reactivity of sample mixture (30wt.% blend of PO into BL) as alkali content in BL kept high catalytic activity despite being diluted by the addition of PO. However, tar and soot formation from this new feedstock remained unknown. In this study, we investigated how the reaction conditions affect the formation of tar and soot to understand their formation mechanism and to suggest suitable operation conditions for the industrial processes. Experiments were carried out with fuel blends containing between 0 and 40wt.% of PO in BL using a laminar entrained flow reactor under the flow of N2/CO2. The effects of operating parameters were evaluated by varying temperature (1073-1673 K), partial pressure of CO2 (0-20 kPa), particle size (90-200 μm and 500-630 μm) and residence time. High temperature (i.e. 1673 K), high heating rate and short residence time experiments were performed to mimic industrial-scale conditions. Soot yield was under detection limit while low amounts of tar (mainly benzene) were formed at low temperature and decreased as the temperature increased. Addition of PO maintained the yields of tar and soot very low while it increased the syngas yield. Overall, this study demonstrated the feasibility of co-gasification of PO and BL and provided valuable information about tar formation under different operating conditions.Godkänd; 2015; 20160524 (albbac