Changqing Cao

Supercritical Water Gasification of Biomass and Organic Wastes

With the exhaustion of fossil fuels and the severe pollution of the environment, it’s urgent to find substitute renewable energy resources. Biomass is a kind of widespread and abundant renewable resource with lower sulfur content than fossil fuels, so the pollution to environment from biomass usage is much slighter than that from fossil fuels usage. Besides, zero emission of CO

Supercritical water synthesis of nano-particle catalyst on TiO2 and its application in supercritical water gasification of biomass

ABSTRACT Hydrogen production by catalytic gasification in supercritical water (SCW) is a promising way to utilise biomass resource. Supercritical water not only provides homogeneous and rapid reaction environment for the biomass gasification but also causes catalyst agglomeration problems. In order to prepare activity and stable catalyst for biomass gasification in supercritical water, supercritical water synthesis method was utilised and the preparation method was investigated. Ni, Co, Zn and Cu metal elements were loaded on TiO2 particles which was proved to be hythothermally steady in supercritical water. And nano-particles were successfully made. Based on gas chromatography/mass spectrometer (GC/MS), scanning electron microscopy, energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS) and X-ray diffraction analysis methods, it turned out that metal catalysts have a uniform spherical structure with diameter around 30 nm. Metal catalysts synthesised with supercritical hydrothermal method showed certain catalytic effects. Ni catalyst had the best performance in stability while Zn catalyst possessed highest hydrogen yield.

Three-dimensional numerical study on flow dynamics characteristics in supercritical water fluidized bed with consideration of real particle size distribution by computational particle fluid dynamics method

Supercritical water fluidized bed is a promising reactor which can realize the efficient and clean gasification of coal to produce hydrogen. As the high pressure and temperature inside supercritical water fluidized bed, the study of the detail flow behaviors needs the help of numerical method. Considering the limitation of the two-fluid method and discrete element method, the computational particle fluid dynamics method was applied to this work. When particle size distribution was taken into consideration, the simulated results showed that the transformation from fixed bed regime to fluidized bed regime is a gradual process. With the increase in superficial fluid velocity, particles in small diameter migrate to the top of the bed and there exits layering phenomenon in the bed. Besides, though the particles are categorized as Geldart B group, the minimum fluidization velocity is not equal to the minimum bubbling fluidization velocity and there is a complicated bed expansion process after incipient fluidization. The bed expansion process is also influenced by the particle size distribution.