Choice of appropriate additives and development of activation procedure for olivine

Research Project, 2014 – 2017

One of the major problems that the biomass gasification faces nowadays are the tars produced during the process. Tars are undesired by-products as they can condense on pipes and/or filters, lead to clogs in the system and require therefore considerable effort to clean the gas before further use. One of the most-commonly adapted approaches to minimize this cleaning effort is by using catalytic bed material such as olivine which is used also in the GoBiGas demo-unit. In order for the olivine to achieve best performance it needs to undergo a long activation process that has shown to lead to difficulties during start-up. The development of a procedure for quick and effective activation of olivine or even an enhancement of its catalytic properties can increase the efficiency of olivine as a bed material and lead to less cleaning demand and lower operational costs.