Technical Communication An experimental study on air gasification of biomass micron fuel (BMF) in a cyclone gasifier Xianjun Guo a,b , Bo Xiao a , Shiming Liu a, *, Zhiquan Hu a , Siyi Luo a , Maoyun He a a School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 1037 Luoyu Rd., Wuhan 430074, China b School of Environment and Materials Engineering, Yantai University, 32 Qingquan Rd., Yantai 264005, China article info Article history: Received 10 November 2008 Received in revised form 16 November 2008 Accepted 17 November 2008 Available online 4 January 2009 Keywords: Biomass micron fuel (BMF) Cyclone gasifier Air gasification abstract Biomass micron fuel (BMF) produced from feedstock (energy crops, agricultural wastes, forestry residues and so on) through an efficient crushing process is a kind of powdery biomass fuel with particle size of less than 250 mm. Based on the properties of BMF, a cyclone gasifier concept has been considered in our laboratory for biomass gasification. The concept combines and integrates partial oxidation, fast pyrolysis, gasification, and tar cracking, as well as a shift reaction, with the purpose of producing a high quality of gas. In this paper, characteristics of BMF air gasification were studied in the gasifier. Without outer heat energy input, the whole process is supplied with energy produced by partial combustion of BMF in the gasifier using a hypostoichiometric amount of air. The effects of equivalence ratio (ER) and biomass particle size on gasification temperature, gas compo- sition, gas yield, low-heating value (LHV), carbon conversion and gasification efficiency were studied. The results showed that higher ER led to higher gasification temperature and contributed to high H 2 -content, but too high ER lowered fuel gas content and degraded fuel gas quality. A smaller particle was more favorable for higher gas yield, LHV, carbon conversion and gasification efficiency. And the BMF air gasification in the cyclone gasifier with the energy self-sufficiency is reliable. ª 2008 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Biomass is a renewable resource with almost zero net CO 2 emission since carbon and energy are fixed during the biomass growth [1,2]. Compared with other renewable energy resources, biomass is huge in annual production with a geographically widespread distribution in the world [3]. Using biomass in an effective way is a challenge for the energy industry. Biomass energy conversion technologies especially pyrolysis and gasification have been substantially studied to promote renewable energy utilization and solving partially the environmental issues. Various types of gasification systems have been developed and some of them are commercialized [4–8]. Narvaez et al. [9] studied biomass gasification with air in a small pilot plant in a bubbling fluid- ized bed and the effect of several variables on the perfor- mance of the gasifier. Bhattacharya et al. [10] reported a gasifier with char produced inside the gasifier itself to act as * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ86 027 87488610; fax: þ86 027 87557464. E-mail address: ytgxj10@yahoo.cn (S. Liu). Available at www.sciencedirect.com journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/he 0360-3199/$ – see front matter ª 2008 International Association for Hydrogen Energy. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijhydene.2008.11.107 international journal of hydrogen energy 34 (2009) 1265–1269