Experimental Study On Electric Current Enhanced Catalytic Steam Reforming Of Model Compounds Of Biomass Gasification Tar

Biomass have not been able to be used effectively with its special energy form, except the extensive burns in the past. The large-scale exploitation of fossil fuels downplayed the biomass energy. With the strained situation of fossil energy and severe environmental problems, utilization biomass, especially like biomass with wood cellulose, for energy is being payed attention to. However, the dispersed distribution and low energy density are bad for biomass gathering. Problems brought by the complex components make it difficult to use biomass efficiently, such as tar generated in gasification and the problems of slag corrosion in direct-fired power generation. All these problems limit the use of biomass on a large scale. With biomass gasification tar as the research object, electric current enhanced catalytic steam reforming of tar model compounds was conducted. Different tar model compounds were used at different temperature and currents strength to explore the conversion, product distribution and the efficiency of method enhanced by electric current.Firstly, with nickel-based catalysts studied in previous studies and toluene as the tar model compound, experiments were conducted to test the effect of the method enhanced by current. Results show that toluene conversion could be increased with the method enhanced by current. When the electric current strength rose from 0 to 4 A at the temperature of 500℃, toluene conversion increased from 24.4% to 83.5%.In consideration of characteristics of catalyst carriers, a different catalyst with Al2O3 as carrier was used. Different tar model compounds were selected to investigate the effect of temperature and current strength on the model compounds conversion and the products distribution. In the end, different gas components and gas mixture including the same components like gasification gas was used to investigate the conversion of p-xylene and the differences of gas components before and after reactions, and the stability of catalyst was also tested. Results showed that the conversion of different tar model compounds could be promoted with the method enhanced by current; the inhibition effect of CO and CO2 in gasification gas could be reduced, and the stability of the catalyst could be increased.In this study, the method of current enhanced catalytic steam reforming was test in different conditions like different catalysts, temperature, electric current strength, tar model compounds and reaction atmospheres to investigate the conversion of model compounds and gas compounds distribution. The method was effective, and series of data achieved can provide theoretic instructions for the real catalytic cracking of biomass tar.