Gasification of sugarcane bagasse in supercritical water media for combined hydrogen and power production: a novel approach

A novel process based on supercritical water gasification has been used in this study for co-production of hydrogen and power from sugarcane bagasse as one of the main agricultural wastes of Iran. The cycle of the process was designed first, and then, the thermodynamic equilibrium model of the gasification process was simulated using ASPEN PLUS. The effects of temperature and feed concentration on molar fraction of main components of produced gas were investigated. The temperature was directly correlated with hydrogen production in which hydrogen and carbon monoxide production was favored at higher temperatures. The maximum hydrogen production occurred in the sugarcane bagasse concentrations about 20–30 wt%. Palladium membrane as a metallic dense membrane was used for separation of high-purity hydrogen. Hydrogen production of 8.55 kg/h and electrical power generation of 56 kW were obtained for the 20 wt% mixture of bagasse with a mass flow rate of 1000 kg/h, reactor pressure of 300 bars and temperature of 700 °C.