Characterization of Various Biomass Sources for Co-Gasification

Issues on the fast depletion of fossil fuel and lots of problem especially on the global
warming phenomena had become a crucial discussion in this century. These situations
have prompted many developed and developing country to find alternative energy
sources which are renewable and environmental friendly. Biomass is seen as having a
big potential to develop especially in Malaysia due to abundance supply of biomass
sources. Biomass energy, or bio-energy, is the energy stored in non-fossil organic
materials. Gasification is one of the techniques in Thermo-chemical Process which is
a process of conversion of solid carbonaceous fuel into combustible gas by partial
combustion. Malaysia has recently ventured into usage of biomass energy and most
of the biomass based plants in Malaysia use sources from oil palm cultivation residue.
However, there may be some situations that these sources fail to fulfil the increasing
energy demand. With that, some of the back-up sources are crucial that the biomass
based plant will not stop the production. Malaysia also has very substantial potential
for biomass energy utilization given its equatorial climate that is ideal for dense
tropical forest growth and agricultural vegetation. However, there is lack of study is
done toward all of these resources since most biomass power plant in Malaysia just
using residue from oil palm sector. The objectives of the present project are study the
characteristic of several potential biomass sources in Malaysia by mean of its
chemical and physical properties and to study on suitability of mixing two or more
biomass feed in gasifier. This study also aimed on a study on suitability of one gasifier
to handle different biomass at different time. Four experiments had conducted which
is calorific test, CHNS analysis, proximate analysis and bulk density test. All of the
experiments were conducted to evaluate the chemical and physical properties of
samples so that characterization of the samples can be made. The result of this project
can be conclude that three type of samples which are weed, dry leave-A and coconut
fibre have a potential to be develop as biomass feed stock since having a good
calorific value, a good carbon, sulphur and nitrogen content and a good bulk density
value.