An increasing emphasis on mitigating global climate change (global warming) over the last few decades has created interest in a broad range of sustainable or alternative energy systems to replace fossil fuel combustion. Biomass, when harvested responsibly, is a renewable fuel with many uses in replacing fossil fuels. Cofiring biomass with coal in traditional large-scale coal power plants represents one of the lowest risk, least costly, near-term methods of CO2 mitigation. Simultaneously, it is one of the most efficient and inexpensive uses of biomass. Alternatively, biomass can be transformed into useful products through gasification to produce clean syngas for highly efficient gas turbines, or feedstock to produce light gases, fuels, chemicals or other products. A large portion of this investigation focused on the effect of cofiring biomass on the near burner region of a commercial coal flame. This research included first-of-their-kind field measurements of flame structure and particle properties in front of a full-scale burner fired with biomass and coal, including measurements of particle size and composition, gas velocity, composition, and temperature in the near-burner region of multiple cofired flames in a 350 MWe full-scale power plant in Studstrup, Denmark. A novel sampling and analysis technique was developed enabling the estimation of the fraction of biomass in the flow as a function of position and the burnout of biomass and coal particles separately. These data show that biomass particles do not follow gas stream lines to the same extent that coal particles do. This is consistent with the larger sizes, slower heating and reaction rates, and higher momentum of biomass particles. This research also includes first-of-their-kind single particle continuous measurements of particle mass, surface and internal temperature, size, shape, during biomass pyrolysis and gasification. The single particle measurements provided among the most highly resolved and repeatable biomass gasification results reported to date for wood, switchgrass and corn stover. All three samples showed greater gasification reactivity to H2O than to CO2. The experiments included results in both reactants individually and combined. One of the most important findings of this work was the experimental confirmation that as the char particles gasify, their ash fractions increase and reaction rates decrease on both an intrinsic and external surface area basis. The analyses in this work show that this decrease in burnout quantitatively corresponds to the change in the predicted fraction of the surface that is ash and does not reflect any change in organic reactivity. Reaction rate parameters suitable for relatively simple power-law models based on external surface area describe all the data reasonably well.

Most of the problems with providing a continuous and sustainable energy supply for the worldwide society are negative consequences to the environment and its living habitants steaming from uses of conventional technologies. Those consequences should be minimized by developing and improving new technologies as well as by utilization of other type of feedstock than fossil fuels, such as biomass, industrial or municipal solid waste. Nowadays, gasification is the main technology for biomass conversion to energy and a great alternative for the thermal treatment of solid waste. The number of various applications for produced gas shows the flexibility of gasification and that is why allows it to be integrated with other industrial processes, as well as power generation systems.             The main objectives of this thesis were to present behavior of different kind of feedstock undergoing pyrolysis/gasification processes in reactors using highly preheated agents and additionally compare the compositions of produced gases. In this thesis two different systems were presented; the first is lab-scale gasifier for the treatment of biocoal, automotive shredder residue (ASR), refuse derived fuel (RDF), biomass (straw pellets) and plastic waste (polyethylene) and the second one is a large up-draft, fixed bed gasifier used for investigation of biocoal. The thesis was divided into four main parts: beginning with theoretical introduction, subsequently showing outcomes from investigations carried out on lab-scale test unit, large HTAG facility and finishing on short conclusions.

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Gasification is a process used to convert any carbonaceous species through heterogeneous reaction to obtain the desired gaseous products of H2 and CO which are used to make chemicals, liquid transportation fuels, and power. Both pyrolysis and heterogeneous gasification occur in commercial entrained-flow gasifiers at pressures from 4 to 65 atm with local gas temperatures as high as 2000 °C. Many gasification studies have been performed at moderate temperatures, heating rates, and pressures. In this work, both pyrolysis and char gasification experiments were performed on coal, petroleum coke, and biomass at conditions pertinent to commercial entrained-flow gasifiers. Rapid biomass pyrolysis experiments were performed at atmospheric pressure in an entrained-flow reactor for sawdust, switchgrass, corn stover, and straw mostly using a peak gas temperature of 1163 K at particle residence times ranging from 34 to 113 ms. Biomass pyrolysis was modeled using the Chemical Percolation Devolatilization model assuming that biomass pyrolysis occurs as a weighted average of its individual components (cellulose, hemicellulose, and lignin). Thermal cracking of biomass tar into light gas was included using a first-order model with kinetic parameters regressed in the current study. Char gasification rates were measured for biomass, petroleum coke, and coal in a pressurized entrained-flow reactor at high heating-rate conditions at total pressures between 10 and 15 atm. Peak centerline gas temperatures were between 1611 and 1879 K. The range of particle residence times used in the gasification experiments was 42 to 275 ms. The CO2 gasification rates of biomass and petroleum coke chars were measured at conditions where the reaction environment consisted of approximately 40 and 90 mol% CO2. Steam gasification rates of coal char were measured at conditions where the maximum H2O concentration was 8.6 mol%. Measured data was used to regress apparent kinetic parameters for a first-order model that describes char conversion. The measured char gasification rates were far from the film-diffusion limit, and are pertinent for pulverized particles where no internal particle temperature gradients are important. The modeling and measured data of char gasification rates in this research will aid in the design and efficient operation of commercial entrained-flow gasifiers, as well as provide validation for both existing and future models at a wide range of temperatures and pressures at high heating-rate conditions.

Sewage sludge is a byproduct of wastewater treatment plants. It is a kind of waste. however, it contains several valuable nutrients like phosphorous and nitrogen that are used to rich the soil as a fertilizer compound. On the other hand, it contains some harmful and toxic compounds such as pathogens, pharmaceuticals, Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCBs), Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), endocrine-disruption, hormones, and heavy metals which are contaminants and pollutants in the environment. Pyrolysis is a way to treat these contaminants and reduces the quantity of heavy metals and removes pathogens. This project derives to pyrolysis the sewage sludge at three different temperatures 500°C,700°C, and 900°C, and evaluates the result according to the remained quantities of heavy metals and phosphorous. Each experiment was repeated three times. Then, the samples weighted and analyzed by bomb calorimeter, microwave digestion, and MP-AES. Bomb calorimetry was used for measuring the heating value to compare the remaining heating value in the samples to the raw sewage sludge. The microwave digestion system was used for chemical processing of the samples in order to break down the samples to liquid form and then the concentration of elements such as Cd, Co, Cr, Cu, Ni, Mn, Zn, Pb, and P were measured by MP-AES. The results were gathered and compared with the Regulation by European, Union, (DirectiveE86/278/EEC), and Regulation by Swedish law, (Regulation1998:994). The raw sewage sludge was delivered from Borås wastewater treatment unit after digestion in an anaerobic fermentation process. It contained about 74% water which was dried in an oven at 105°C. The results show that Cd and Co were removed from the sewage sludge and the most amount of phosphorus remained in the resulting char. The results show that the quantity of phosphorus was almost the same between 500°C-700°C. The data shows that the amount of Pb was reduced by increasing the temperature of the pyrolysis reaction. The heating value in the char was extremely close to each other in the different range of reaction temperatures between 500°C to 900°C.

Recently, the supercritical carbon dioxide (s-CO2) Brayton cycle has been identified as a promising candidate for solar-thermal energy conversion due to its potentially high thermal efficiency (50%, for turbine inlet temperatures of ~ 1000 K). Realization of such a system requires development of solar receivers which can raise the temperature of s-CO2 by over 200 K, to a receiver outlet temperature of 1000 K. Volumetric receivers are an attractive alternative to tubular receivers due to their geometry, functionality and reduced thermal losses. A concept of a ceramic pressurized volumetric receiver for s-CO2 has been developed in this work. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis along with a Discrete Ordinate method (DOM) radiation heat transfer model has been carried out, and the results for temperature distribution in the receiver and the resulting thermal efficiency are presented. Issues regarding material selection for the absorber structure, window, coating, receiver body and insulation are also addressed. A modular small scale prototype with 0.5 kWth solar heat input has been designed. The design of a small scale s-CO2 loop for testing this receiver module is also presented in this work. There is a lot of ongoing investigation for design and simulation of different configurations of heat exchangers and solar receivers using s-CO2 as the working fluid, in which wall temperatures up to 1000 K are encountered. While CO2 is considered to be transparent as far as solar radiation spectrum is concerned, there may be considerable absorption of radiation in the longer wavelength range associated with radiation emission from the heated cavity walls and tubes inside the receivers. An attempt has been made, in this study, to include radiation modelling to capture the effect of absorption bands of s-CO2 and the radiative heat transfer among the equipment surfaces. As a case study, a numerical study has been performed to evaluate the contribution of radiative heat transfer as compared to convection and conduction, for s-CO2 flow through a circular pipe. The intent is to provide a guideline for future research to determine the conditions for which radiation heat transfer modelling inside the pipe can be significant, and what errors can be expected otherwise. The effect of parameters such as Reynolds number, pipe diameter, length to diameter ratio, wall emissivity and total wall heat flux has been studied. The effect of radiation modelling on wall temperatures attained for certain amount of heat flux to be transferred to s-CO2 is also studied. The resulting temperature distribution, in turn, affects the estimation of heat loss to the environment