Simulation of Jatropha curcas shell in gasifier for synthesis gas and hydrogen production

This paper examines a simulation of Jatropha curcas shell within an entrained flow gasifier to predict the composition of gaseous product. Since there is no available data of Jatropha shell experiment, we validated the model using other biomass: rice husk and sawdust. The validation results showed that the model agreed with the experimental data of rice husk and sawdust. Furthermore, the same model is applied for Jatropha curcas properties data. From this simulation, we obtained that carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H₂) increased when reactor temperature was raised. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄) decreased. Since the simulation is not validated directly with Jatropha shell experimental data, error may come because of this situation. Therefore, we applied the Mean Error Approach (MEA) and produced a range of gas products through Jatropha shell in a simulation. The MEA data shows that methane (CH₄) has the highest mean errors with both sawdust and rice husk, at values of 0.8776 and 0.6115, respectively. Carbon monoxide (CO) on the other hand, has the lowest error. When we then apply this MEA to Jatropha shell simulation result, it shows that the range of carbon dioxide (CO₂) produced by Jatropha shell gasification has a composition ranging from 40.54 to 52.32% at a temperature of 1000 °C. The composition ranges of hydrogen (H₂), carbon dioxide (CO₂), and methane (CH₄) gases are 27.07-35.91%, 5.43-28.29%, and 0.49-9.96%, respectively.