To study the biomass properties for a dual fuel engine

Abstract

The current trend of energy consumption, in which fossil fuel is the main energy provider, has reached a level where other resources must be unearthed to ensure there is a constant supply for utilization. The rise in fuel prices recently has affected economic activity and only worsens the global energy scenario. Electricity generation is possible in new applications like biomass gasification. Among the all possible gasifiers, fluidized bed gasifiers are very appropriate in much respect. As major occupation of people in Punjab is agriculture. So a major source of biomass comes from this field. For this experiments are performed by taking three samples of biomass i.e cotton stalk, sugarcane bagasse and mustard stalk. It is performed for various openings of the gasifier valve at different loads; the loads are taken as 2 kW, 4 kW and 6 kW. The openings are three revolutions of gasifier valve, six revolutions and maximum possible revolutions. As predicted with the use of producer gas the consumption of diesel decreases considerably and subsequently the cost of operation also decreases. From the comparison of the three biomass samples it is clear that the cotton stalk stands out to be the better fuel option. With a wide range of applications the gasifier arrangement has a great potential to reduce the gap between energy requirement and supply of energy.