A Study on Applying PID Control to a Downdraft Fixed Bed Gasifier using Wood Pellets

Biomass is material that is comprehensive of carbonaceous materials from plants, crops, animals, and algae. It has been used as one of heating fuel since the beginning the emergence of human beings. Since biomass is regarded as carbon-neutral energy source, it has recently been attracting attention as an energy source that can replace fossil fuels. The most widely applied field is distributed power generation, and a method of generating electric power by driving an internal combustion engine with syngas produced by gasifier is chosen. While the composition of the syngas produced in gasifiers changes depending on the air flowing into the reactor, commercialized gasifiers so far do not control the air flowing into the reactor. When the inner pressure in reactor increases, the air sucked into the reactor is reduced. That change of amount of air makes the composition of syngas varied. Those variations of composition of syngas cause the incomplete combustion hence the power output of engine drops, which is a critical weakness of the gasification technology. In this paper, to produce the uniformly composed syngas, PID control is applied. The result was shown when the amount of air into the reactor is supplied with the constant amount using PID control, the standard deviation of caloric values of syngas is around 2[%] of its average value. Meanwhile the gasifier without PID control has the standard deviation of caloric values is around 7[%]. Therefore, Adopting PID control to supply constant air to the gasifier is highly desirable.