Advanced Biomass Gasification: New Concepts for Efficiency Increase and Product Flexibility

Advanced Biomass Gasification: New Concepts for Efficiency Increase and Product Flexibility provides a thorough overview on new concepts in biomass gasification and consolidated information on advances for process integration and combination, which could otherwise only be gained by reading a high number of journal publications. Heidenreich, Müller and Foscolo, highly respected experts in this field, start their exploration with the compact UNIQUE reactor, gasification and pyrolysis, gasification and combustion, and catalysts and membranes. The authors then examine biomass pre-treatment processes, taking into account the energy balance of the overall conversion process, and look into oxygen-steam gasification and solutions for air separation, including new options for integration of O2-membranes into the gasifier. Several polygeneration strategies are covered, including combined heat and power (CHP) production with synthetic natural gas (SNG), biofuels and hydrogen, and new cutting-edge concepts, such as plasma gasification, supercritical water gasification, and catalytic gasification, which allows for insights on the future technological outlook of the area. This book is then a valuable resource for industry and academia-based researchers, as well as graduate students in the energy and chemical sectors with interest in biomass gasification, especially in areas of power engineering, bioenergy, chemical engineering, and catalysis.

Steffen Heidenreich received his Ph.D. in process engineering from the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, in 1997. From 1997-2000 he was a researcher at the Institute of Material Research at the Research Center of Karlsruhe, Germany. In 2000 he joined SCHUMACHER Umwelt-und Trenntechnik GmbH, Germany (since 2002 part of Pall Corporation) as leader of the process development group. In 2001 he became head of the research and development department of Pall Filtersystems GmbH Werk Schumacher. In August 2014 Steffen Heidenreich has been appointed Director Global Technology New Technologies and Ceramic of the business unit Process Systems of Pall Corporation. He is author or co-author of more than 50 papers in international journals and of more than 20 patents and patent applications. He is vice chairman of the subject divison “Gas Cleaning” of ProcessNet, the German platform for chemical engineering. Dr. Heidenreich is a reviewer for a number of international journals, including Biomass and Bioenergy, Fuel, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Applied Energy, and is a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Catalysts and the Journal of Membrane and Separation Technology. Currently, he is leading guest editor of the special issue “Catalysts and sorbents for gas cleaning” of the Journal of Chemistry. His research interests focus on hot gas filtration, biomass and coal gasification, catalytic gas phase reactions, catalysts, membranes and process intensification.

Michael Müller received his Ph.D. in Corrosion Science from RWTH Aachen, Germany, in 1999, after having received his diploma in the same field from MFH Iserlohn, Germany, and another diploma in Chemistry also from RWTH Aachen. He was a researcher at the Institute for Materials and Processes in Energy Systems, IWV-2, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, from 2000 until 2005. Since then, he is Head of Thermochemistry section, Institute of Energy and Climate Research, IEK-2, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH. His research interests are high temperature chemistry in thermal conversion of solid and liquid fuels, thermo-chemistry and thermo-physics of ashes, slags, salts, energy materials, and related systems, chemical hot gas cleaning and hight temperature corrosion.

Pier Ugo Foscolo became Professor of Chemical Reaction Engineering at the Department of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials of University of L’Aquila, Italy, in 1989, after being Associate Professor at the same institution, Research Associate and Research Fellow at University College London, United Kingdom. Since then, he has coordinated a number of research projects, both in Italy and across Europe, and has been a member of the scientific committee of several international conferences. He is also a member of the Working Party on Chemical Reaction Engineering of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering, regular reviewer for a number of international journals, including the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, AIChE Journal, Industrial and Engineering Chemistry Research and Chemical Engineering Science. Professor Foscolo has authored more than one hundred articles in scientific journals and conference proceedings, as well as six patents dealing with catalytic clean‐up of biomass gas and gasifier configuration, and been appointed by the European Commission to review research proposals in the field of biomass for energy. His research intersts are biomass gasification, fuel gas cleaning and conditioning, and fluidized bed reactors.