Organic Waste Gasification: A Selective Review

Abstract

This review considers the selective studies on environmentally friendly, combustion-free, allothermal, atmospheric-pressure, noncatalytic, direct H2O/CO2 gasification of organic feedstocks like biomass, sewage sludge wastes (SSW) and municipal solid wastes (MSW) to demonstrate the pros and cons of the approaches and provide future perspectives. The environmental friendliness of H2O/CO2 gasification is well known as it is accompanied by considerably less harmful emissions into the environment as compared to O2/air gasification. Comparative analysis of the various gasification technologies includes low-temperature H2O/CO2 gasification at temperatures up to 1000 °C, high-temperature plasma- and solar-assisted H2O/CO2 gasification at temperatures above 1200 °C, and an innovative gasification technology applying ultra-superheated steam (USS) with temperatures above 2000 °C obtained by pulsed or continuous gaseous detonations. Analysis shows that in terms of such characteristics as the carbon conversion efficiency (CCE), tar and char content, and the content of harmful by-products the plasma and detonation USS gasification technologies are most promising. However, as compared with plasma gasification, detonation USS gasification does not need enormous electric power with unnecessary and energy-consuming gas–plasma transition.