Abstract—With an increased interest in energy production
from biomass through gasification, the properties of biomass
that influenced gasification performance have been investigated.
One of important properties is the moisture content. Generally,
the excessive moisture in biomass is reduced to meet the
acceptable level for gasification by an additional pretreatment
process which always costs extra investment. One possible
alternative is the co-processing of high-moisture biomass fuels
with other low-moisture fuels. In this study, the utilization of
plastic waste to solve the problem of high-moisture biomass
gasification was investigated by mixing the high-moisture
rubber woodchip (27%M.C.) with plastic waste at various
mixing ratios. The results showed a significant improvement of
gasification performance. Even at 10% mixing ratio, the higher
heating value of the product gas increased by about 50% and
25% compared to the case of high-moisture rubber woodchip
(27%M.C.) and pre-dried rubber woodchip (8.5%M.C.),
respectively. Compared to mixing with rubber waste at the same
weight ratio, the plastic waste addition was found to give a
better gasification improvement largely due to the higher carbon
and hydrogen content in plastic waste. The findings from this
study have shown not only that the high-moisture biomass can
be used without pretreatment needed, but also an effective
solution to plastic waste disposal.
Index Terms—Gasification, plastic waste, rubber woodchip.
P. Chobthiangtham and S. Fukuda are with the Joint Graduate School of
Energy and Environment, King Mongkut’s University of Technology
Thonburi, Bangkok, 10140 Thailand (e-mail: chobpin@gmail.com,
suneerat@jgsee.kmutt.ac.th).
Cite:P. Chobthiangtham and S. Fukuda, "Utilization of Plastic Waste to Solve the Problem in High-Moisture Biomass Gasification," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 6, no.11, pp. 805-810, 2015.