Continuous Gasification and Syngas Reforming of City Wastes for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

The increasing amount of MSW in recent years raises the problems of sustainable disposal in Taipei cities. For recovering chemical energy, wastes can be served as fuels in gasification processing. In this study, thermal process of three city wastes was conducted and K2CO3 catalyst was used as a catalyst to reduce the amount of tar, which was lowered to 13.7 wt% in MSW. Raw syngas from gasification was then reformed by Ni-CeO2/γ-Al2O3 catalyst to get syngas with optimized quantity of 51.3 vol% H2 and 3.4 vol% CH4. Impurity of H2S generated in waste paper was reduced to 0.04 ppm by adsorption of CaCO3. Continuous gasifier designed with small-scale and portable feature was set up in a processing capability of 300 g h-1. The H2 production of waste paper in the gasifier was 46.9 vol% in air flow rate of 1 L min-1. With a higher waste feeding rate and air flow rate, the H2 content decreased. The syngas with 51.3 vol% H2, 44.8 vol% CO and 3.4 vol% CH4 was used in single cell and the power output was 269 mW cm-2 at 800oC. The gas equivalence ratio φ was ~ 0.19.