An experimental investigation of Hydrogen production from Malaysia agricultural waste in a fluidized bed gasifier

Recently, hydrogen production from biomass is an attractive technology for power generation. The main objective pursued in this work is to investigate the hydrogen production potential from agricultural waste (coconut coir and palm kernel shell) by applying fluidized bed gasification technique. An experimental study was conducted using a bench-scale fluidized bed gasifier with 60 mm diameter and 425 mm height. During the experiments, the fuel properties and the effects of operating parameters such as gasification temperatures (800 to 900°C), fluidization ratio (2 to 3.33 m/s), static bed height (10 to 30 mm) and equivalence ratio (0.16 to0.46) were analyzed and discussed. It was concluded that substantial amount of hydrogen gas (up to 67 mol%) could be produced utilizing agricultural residues as coconut and palm kernel shell by applying fluidization technique For both samples, the rise of temperature till 900°C favored hydrocarbon further reactions and allowed an increase of almost 67 mol% in hydrogen release. However, other parameters such as fluidizing velocity and feed load showed only minor effects on hydrogen yield. As conclusion, agricultural waste can be assumed as an alternative renewable energy source to the fossil fuels, and the environmental pollution originating from the disposal of agricultural residues can be partially reduced.