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The growing need to reduce the environmental impact of the modern lifestyle imposes a continuous development of novel technologies aimed at a severe reduction of pollutant emissions in order to ensure a tolerable quality of life in metropolitan areas. Among potential alternatives, particular attention has been recently addressed toward the exploitation of residual biomass and wastes as sources for syngas production by thermo-chemical processes for heat and power production. Fruits processing industries generate important amount of residues, which must be managed properly by recycling, incineration or land filling. Due to the high carbon content, these residues represent a significant source of energy that could be valorized by gasification processes. Hence, our attention was focused on the energy recovery from orange peels residues produced by a Sicilian agro-industrial company by steam gasification. Thermodynamic and experimental analysis were carried out. Experiments were performed in a fixed bed laboratory scale reactor working with catalytic materials (Ni/Al2O3, MgO and dolomite mineral) with the biomass in order to investigate the influence of experimental conditions on the outlet stream compositions, mainly in terms of hydrogen content of the produced syngas. Results were compared to thermodynamic data in order to gain information of the experimental method used. The results have confirmed successfully the experimental results compared with the simulation data. The highest concentration (65.9%) of hydrogen volume in the syngas mixture was reached with dolomite mineral as catalyst., Proceedings of the 24th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 6-9 June 2016, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pp. 918-921

The aim of this work is to assess the integration of citrus residues gasification in a Sicilian medium size enterprise, which processes about 85,000 t/year of fresh fruit. In this work, gasification tests were performed in a bench-scale fluidized bed reactor working with both air and air-steam mixtures as gasification mediums. The gasification experiments were carried out at 700, 750, and 850 °C and at different steam to biomass ratios (0 – 1.25). Thus, evaluations on syngas composition and gasification efficiencies were carried out. According to the experimental results, the highest net cold gas efficiency (0.71) was achieved at 850°C and S/B =0.5. A combined heat and power (CHP) unit, using a reciprocating engine, was selected in order to simulate the combination of the gasification unit with an internal combustion engine (ICE).The results showed that the proposed system allows to produce about 8,256 MWhe/year and 10,224MWht/year as electrical and thermal output, respectively, by using two CHP units of 516 kWe, and consuming about 7,112 t/year of dry citrus peel (10%wt moisture). The thermal power output produced by CHP system may be used for drying the fresh citrus peels up to the desired water content, being this step the most energy demanding step., Proceedings of the 25th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 12-15 June 2017, Stockholm, Sweden, pp. 106-110

This work reports the experimental comparative study between two residual biomasses (Citrus peels and beached Posidonia Oceanica) and a traditional woody feedstock (White pine) through TG-DTG analysis and gasification measurements performed at 1023 K, 1 bar, Equivalence Ratio equal to 0.3, and different Steam to Biomass inlet ratio (0.0–1.0). These biomasses could represent important renewable sources for energy purpose, enhancing local economies and being a good path for reducing residues/waste landfilling. Thermo-gravimetric analysis reveal a shift of the peaks corresponding to hemicellulose, cellulose and lignin compounds to lower temperatures both Citrus peels and Posidonia Oceanica DTG graphs than White pine DTG profiles probably due to the interaction of lignocellulosic compounds with other molecules of the biomass structures. Gasification measurements highlight that increasing the Steam to Biomass inlet stream an increasing of syngas and H2 yields can be obtained for all biomasses investigated. Posidonia Oceanica gasification tests showed the best yield rates of syngas (2.70 Nm3/kgbiomass) and hydrogen (0.65 Nm3/kgbiomass) at Steam to Biomass equal to 1 wt/wt, however the gasification of Posidonia Oceanica has exhibited lower Cold Gas Efficiency, Carbon Conversion Efficiency and Lower Heating Value syngas values than Citrus peels gasification in all range of Steam to Biomass ratio., Proceedings of the 27th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 27-30 May 2019, Lisbon, Portugal, pp. 907-912