Abstract

FORERO NUNEZ, Carlos A.; CASTELLANOS CONTRERAS, José U.  and  SIERRA VARGAS, Fabio E.. Control de una planta prototipo de gasificación de biomasa mediante redes neuronales. Ingenier. mecáni. tecnolog. desarroll [online]. 2013, vol.4, n.5, pp.161-168. ISSN 1665-7381.

The gasification power systems are a remarkable alternative because they can use agro-industrial wastes to produce clean syngas; although, the differences between the biomass properties and the inner temperatures throughout the equipment make compulsory the use of control systems to achieve stable states. This work aims to analyze the effect of applying a Neural Network Control System on a Downdraft fixed bed gasifier fed with Coconut shells and Oil Palm shells. Results show that the use of the control system on the equipment fed with coconut shells increased the maximum temperature at the air injection zone from 600°C to 800°C, which overcomes the problems found by the low thermal conductivity of the coconut shells. With the control system and the equipment fed with oil palm shells, the maximum temperature was 790°C; the CO in the syngas was stable at 10%, whereas the CO₂ decreased to 4%. The Neural Network control system is useful because this can be trained for each biomass, resulting on stable temperatures and low CO₂ syngas. This improves the chances of producing energy from renewable resources in a country with a lot of agro-industrial byproducts like Colombia.

Keywords : Biomass; Coconut Shells; Smart Control Gasification; Neural Network.

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