Performance of Spray Scrubber for Tar Removal and Energy Density of CPG from Rice Husk Gasification

A fuel gas from rice husk gasification “a producer gas” has a good potential as a compressed producer gas (CPG) fuel. However, cleaning of the producer gas has to be performed to reduce tar content before compressing into cylinder. The present work aims to investigate performance of spray scrubber on tar removal and energy density of CPG from rice husk gasification. The performance of the scrubber is evaluated at different adsorbent and spray pressure. The adsorbents used are water and waste of cooking oil under spray pressure of 2, 4, 6, and 8 bar. The data taken during the experimental work are producer gas and adsorbent temperatures, gas composition, and gravimetric tar. The data are used to analyze performance of the scrubber in terms of tar removal and cooling effectiveness, and energy density of CPG. The results show that water spray scrubber has higher effectiveness than waste of palm oil scrubber. Pressure of the spray also impacts scrubber’s performance in reducing tar content. Scrubber’s effectiveness improves as stepping up spray pressure. At spray pressure of 6 bar for water scrubber and 8 bar for waste of cooking oil scrubber, the gravimetric tar was 83.33 mg/Nm3 and 83 mg/Nm3 which are suitable for vehicular fuel. The highest tar removal effectiveness of the scrubber is found at spray pressure of 8 bar which are 0.94 and 0.75 for water spray scrubber and waste palm oil scrubber. The highest energy density of the CPG of 2.57 MJ/Nm3 is obtained at water spray pressure of 6 bar. © 2024 The authors.