Conversion of biomass to syngas which is used as an intermediate in ammonia production

[okulkarni96]

The biggest capital cost for ammonia production is generating hydrogen from syn gas.Syn gas is a fuel-gas mixture containing hydrogen , carbon monoxide and very often some carbon dioxide. The main reaction that produces syn gas is steam reforming . This reaction between natural gas and steam is strongly endothermic with 206 kJ/mol methane. This process is used in the industrial synthesis of hydrogen used in the production of ammonia.

                 But the Unniversity Of Minnesota lab takes sugar water, soy oil or biodiesel and converts it directly to syn gas via reactive flash volitilization process.This technology is fast and small. It requires no extra carbon.This process consists of a ceramic porous catalyst disk on which droplets of fuel are thrown.This catalyst disk is heated upto temp.1000 degree F. As these droplets are small and catalyst is very hot , they do not have chance to burn to char and are converted to form syn gas.

                   This process is autothermic means it does not need more heating.The required temperature is maintained by heat of reaction alone. Hence primer in the system is only to heat porous ceramic catalyst.So it reduces energy cost. So it is a good way to take biomass and convert it to syn gas. Because syn gas production using steam reforming requires great amount of heat as it is endothermic reaction. As temperature of ceramic catalyst is very high we can directly use cellulose instead of extracting sugar from it which takes too much time.