CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS VOL. 32, 2013 A publication of The Italian Association of Chemical Engineering Online at: www.aidic.it/cet Chief Editors: Sauro Pierucci, Jiří J. Klemeš Copyright © 2013, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l., I SBN 978-88-95608-23-5; I SSN 1974-9791 Evaluation of Pyrolysis and Steam Gasification Processes of Sugarcane Bagasse in a Fixed Bed Reactor Jaiver Efren Jaimes Figueroa*, Y. Camacho Ardila, B. Hoss Lunelli, R. Maciel Filho, M. R. Wolf Maciel Department of Process and Product Development. School of Chemical Engineering. Av. Albert Einstein, 500. Cidade Universitária "Zeferino Vaz", CEP 13083-862. State University of Campinas - UNICAMP. Campinas-SP, Brazil. jaiverej@hotmail.com Sugarcane bagasse is the main byproduct of sugarcane mill, ready available at the production site so that it may be a suitable raw material for the production of biofuels, chemicals and electricity. Among the methods that have been widely studied, there are thermochemical processes such as gasification, pyrolysis and direct combustion. The direct combustion is used to produce electricity while the pyrolysis and gasification are used to obtain high value-added products such as bio-oil and synthesis gas (Syngas). In this study we performed a comparison between the experimental results by pyrolysis and gasification reactions. The pyrolysis and gasification of sugarcane bagasse was carried out, using a laboratory-scale fixed bed reactor in order to produce bio-oil (pyrolysis) and Syngas (gasification). The gasification and pyrolysis were studied and evaluated the char, tar and gas production as well as the composition of the gas produced. For the pyrolysis temperature was varied from 500 °C to 900 °C and a quite broad reaction time range was considered. In gasification were evaluated the reaction temperature equal to 900 °C, reaction time and steam/bagasse ratio equal 2.0. The behavior for both process was presented. 1. Introduction The thermochemical processes such as pyrolysis and gasification produce, besides hydrogen, a gas mixture containing carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) and light hydrocarbons. This gas is used in many industrial applications such as production of methanol, hydrogen, ammonia, sulphuric acid, formaldehyde or like saturated steam gas turbine The pyrolysis process at low temperatures (400 - 600 °C) is formed of liquid and gaseous products are formed from high temperature (900 °C). Gasification and pyrolysis are similar processes however the gasification takes place in the presence of oxygen in the form of air or steam whereas the pyrolysis occurs in the absence of oxygen (Zhou et al., 2008). Gases and liquids produced in the pyrolysis and gasification processes can be used as energy, as heat and electricity or chemicals production. For example, gases with high contents of CO and H 2 can be a source of synthesis gas (for methanol, DME or Fischer-Tropsch synthesis) or H 2 (fuel cells) (Baumlin et al., 2006). Products with high added value such as hydrogen or synthesis gas can be produced from pyrolysis of bagasse using a fixed bed reactor. The synthesis gas comprises a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide (H 2 +CO). The pyrolysis of sugarcane bagasse can be accomplished in two ways, with or without carrier gas (nitrogen). The literature emphasizes that it is very difficult to perform this process without the use of carrier gas (N 2 ), this occurs because the formation of soot. The presence of the carrier gas provide a uniform distribution of the reagent in the reactor bed (Skoulou and Zabaniotou, 2013). The gasification process can be defined as a process of partial combustion of sugarcane bagasse because it uses an amount of air less than that required stoichiometrically. The gaseous product is obtained consisting of hydrogen (H 2 ), carbon monoxide (CO) and carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), comprising the synthesis gas (Lan et al., 2013). 925