Kinetic Study of Gasification of Microalgae

Biomasses from different sources have the potential to be converted into chemicals and gaseous fuels for power generation. In recent years, the use of algae as a source of bio-oil and biogas for power applications has been studied. Algae are basically a large and diverse group of simple, typically autotrophic organisms, ranging from unicellular to multicellular forms. Algae have the potential to produce significantly greater quantities of biomass and lipids per hectare than any terrestrial biomass, with the advantage that they can be grown on marginal lands therefore do not compete with food production or other crops. There are numerous species of microalgae with high growth capacity and oil content in the 20-50% range of dry weight of biomass. This work studied the kinetics of pyrolysis and gasification of microalgae Chlorella vulgaris. The experiments were performed using thermal gravimetric analysis coupled to gas chromatography. The effects of the main parameters such as mass of the sample, reaction temperature and flow rate of inert carrier gas (argon) were evaluated. Kinetic data were interpreted using the independent parallel reaction approach, which allows identifying the main weight loss events of the process as the main components of the biomass, by attributing to each component a specific kinetics.