Development Models of Stoichiometric Thermodynamic Equilibrium for Predicting Gas Composition from Biomass Gasification: Correction Factors for Reaction Equilibrium Constants

A complex thermochemical process during biomass gasification includes many chemical reactions. Therefore, a stoichiometric model can be applied to predict the composition of the producer gas during gasification. However, the prediction of methane and hydrogen gas is still limited by a significant margin using the present stoichiometric models. The purpose of this research was to develop novel stoichiometric models that account for the reaction equilibrium constant with correction factors. The new models would enable forecasting of the composition of CO, CO2, CH4, H2, N2, tar, lower heating value (LHV), and cold gasification efficiency (CGE). Model development consisted of two stages, whereas the development of the models and their validation adopted an artificial neural network (ANN) approach. The first stage was calculating new correction factors and defining the new equilibrium constants. The results were six stoichiometric models (M1–M6) with four sets of correction factors (A–D) that built up the new equilibrium constants. The second stage was validating the models and evaluating their accuracy. Validation was performed by the Root Mean Square Error (RMSE), whereas accuracy was evaluated using a paired t-test. The developed models predicted the composition of the producer gas with an RMSE of less than 3.5% and ΔH-value of less than 0. The models did not only predict the composition of the producer gas, but they also predicted the tar concentration. The maximum tar concentration was predicted by M2C with 98.733 g/Nm3 at O/C 0.644, H/C 1.446, ER 0.331, and T 923 K. The composition of producer gases (CO, CO2, H2, and N2) was accurately predicted by models M1D, M2C, and M3C. This research introduces new models with variables N/C, O/C, H/C, ER, and T to simulate the composition of CO, CO2, CH4, H2, N2, and LHV-gas, with R2 > 0.9354, tar (C6H6)-R2 of 0.8638, and CGE-R2 of 0.8423. This research also introduces correction factors and a new empirical correlation for the reaction equilibrium constants in new stoichiometric models using steam reforming.