Fuel 103 (2013) 58–63

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Fuel
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fuel

Simulation of municipal solid waste gasification in two different types of fixed

bed reactors
Chong Chen, Yu-Qi Jin ⇑, Jian-Hua Yan, Yong Chi
State Key Laboratory of Clean Energy Utilization, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Simulation of municipal solid waste (MSW) gasification with air in two different types of fixed bed reac-
Received 13 January 2011 tors has been carried out by using Aspen plus. One type of the fixed bed reactors is an updraft fixed bed
Received in revised form 20 April 2011 reactor which can be divided into four sections (drying, pyrolysis, gasification, and combustion), and the
Accepted 13 June 2011
other type is different in the last two sections that the flue gas from the combustion section is not intro-
Available online 24 August 2011
duced into the gasification section. The effect of flue gas from the combustion section on the composition
and lower heating value (LHV) of syngas, heat conversion efficiency, and carbon conversion at different
Keywords:
gasification temperatures and air equivalence ratios are investigated. The results indicate that the intro-
Gasification
MSW
duction of flue gas from combustion section into the gasification section improves the heat conversion
Aspen plus efficiency and the LHV of syngas. Carbon conversion increases with the increase of gasification temper-
Fixed bed ature and air equivalence ratio in both reactors. The concentration of each component in syngas is differ-
ent in the two types of reactors at lower air equivalence ratio, but no difference can be found at higher air
equivalence ratio.
Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction gasification can be used directly or stored and it is expected to

The increasing amounts of MSW have brought great trouble to
the economic development of the cities in China. Most of the areas,
especially undeveloped areas, use landfill as the main disposal op-
tion for MSW. But the cities have developed rapidly since the last
decade, and landfill is no longer economic because the lands around
the cities have become more and more expensive. And MSW has
been recognized as a type of fuel. As a result, the Chinese govern-
ment has decided to invest more and more human and material re-
sources in the development of MSW disposing technology.
Incineration has considered being a useful technology for MSW
treatment since it can reduce the weight and volume of MSW and
can also get energy recovery from MSW. However, this technology
has still not been accepted by most of people in China because of
the emissions, especially the PCDD/Fs, from MSW incineration
[1–3]. And communities have heard of the concerns about waste
incinerators in other localities, even though these are often older
inefficient designs not the state-of-the-art technologies which
could be used. Nevertheless, gasification has the advantage of low-
er emissions, compared to MSW incineration [1,4]. To provide a
more energy efficient and environmental friendly solution, the
study of gasification has attracted great interest. The syngas from
⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 571 87952037; fax: +86 571 87952438.
E-mail addresses: msw_7@zju.edu.cn (C. Chen), beyondcc@hotmail.com (Y.-Q.
Jin), yanjh@zju.edu.cn (J.-H. Yan), chiyong@zju.edu.cn (Y. Chi).
be a future energy carrier.
Gasification of MSW or biomass is mainly processed in two
types of reactors [5]: fluidized bed reactors and fixed bed reactors.
Fluidized bed is more complicated in operating and constructing
which is often adopted for larger capacity MSW treatment [6].
However, fluidized bed requires more investment while fixed bed
requires less investment and it is more suitable for smaller capac-
ity MSW treatment. As a result, fixed bed is more suitable in coun-
ties and towns which have a relatively smaller MSW yield. There
are mainly two types of fixed bed reactors: updraft fixed bed reac-
tor and downdraft fixed bed reactor. From the review of gasifica-
tion in fixed bed [7–9], it can be found that updraft gasifiers have
the advantages of high reliability, high efficiency, low specific
emissions and feedstock flexibility and the disadvantage of high
tar content which can be solved when the gasifiers are used for
thermal applications. Downdraft gasifiers have the advantage of
relatively low tar content, however, the tar from downdraft gasifi-
ers is more stable than that from updraft gasifiers and that may
still result in problems in tar removal [8] and the internal heat ex-
change is not as efficient as in the updraft gasifier [10,11]. On the
other hand, downdraft gasifiers have the disadvantages of narrow
specifications of both feedstock size and moisture content, and
limited capacity which may not be suitable for disposing the rela-
tively high yield of MSW from counties and towns. In summary, it
can be concluded that updraft fixed bed reactors are more suitable
for MSW gasification in counties and towns.

0016-2361/$ - see front matter Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.fuel.2011.06.075
 C. Chen et al. / Fuel 103 (2013) 58–63
Nomenclature
nCO molar yield of CO (mol)
nH2 molar yield of H2 (mol)
nCH4 molar yield of CH4 (mol)
V volume of syngas (m3)
LHV lower heating value (kJ/N m3)
m1 weight of carbon in the syngas (kg)
In this study, MSW gasification process with air in two different
types of updraft gasifiers is proposed. Aspen plus is adopted to sim-
ulate the whole processes. The results of simulation are to demon-
strate the specifications of these two gasifiers, and also to provide a
way for deciding which type is more attractive under certain de-
mands. The specifications consist of the composition and lower
heating value (LHV) of syngas, heat conversion efficiency, and car-
bon conversion at different gasification temperature and air equiv-
alence ratio.
2. Technical and modeling approach
Aspen plus has been widely used in the fields of chemical engi-
neering, oil industry, coal gasification and others. Especially, it has
been used in many researches on biomass or MSW gasification
[12–17]. It is considered to be an excellent design tool because of
its ability in simulating a variety of steady-state processes involv-
ing many units [18]. It is based on a minimization of the Gibbs free
energy at equilibrium. This simulation is developed under the
assumption that the residence time is long enough to allow the
chemical reactions to reach an equilibrium state.
The flowcharts of those two types of gasifiers (Types (a) and (b))
are shown in Fig. 1. Both of them can be divided into four sections:
drying section, pyrolysis section, gasification section and combus-
tion section. As shown in Fig. 1 (Type (a)), MSW is fed from the top
into drying section where MSW is dried by the syngas from pyro-
lysis section; then the dried MSW is pyrolyzed in pyrolysis section.
The solid products from pyrolysis section are gasified in gasifica-
tion section with flue gas from combustion section. In combustion
section, the gasified solid products are combusted with the air
introduced from the bottom. The combusted products in combus-
tion section are residue and flue gas which is go up into the gasifi-
cation section. As shown in Fig. 1 (Type (b)), this type of gasifier is
different at the area between gasification section and combustion
section. It can be found that the flue gas from combustion section
is not introduced into gasification section while a secondary air is
introduced.
The Aspen plus simulation flowcharts are shown in Figs. 2 and 3
respectively. The simulations of the MSW gasification process were
based on balance of mass and energy, and chemical equilibrium
among the overall process. The Aspen system is based on ‘‘blocks’’
corresponding to unit operations as well as chemical reactors,
through which most industrial operations can be simulated. It in-
cludes several databases containing physical, chemical and ther-
modynamic data for a wide variety of chemical compounds, as
well as a selection of thermodynamic models required for accurate
simulation of any given chemical system [19]. In this study, several
Aspen plus units were used. The main reactors were simulated by
three blocks in Aspen plus: Rstoic, Ryield and Rgibbs. In the Aspen
plus process simulator, Rstoic is a block that can be used to simu-
late a reactor with the unknown or unimportant reaction kinetic
and known stoichiometry by specifying the extent of reaction or
the fractional component of the key component. Thus in this sim-
ulation, it was used to simulate the drying process (moisture evap-
orated). Ryield is a block which can be used to model a reactor by
59
q carbon conversion of MSW
Q LHV of the syngas (dry) yield in the gasifier (kJ/N m3)
mMSW weight of MSW fed into the system (kg)
h heat conversion efficiency of syngas (kJ/kg)
specifying yield distribution data or correlation when reaction stoi-
chiometry and kinetics are unknown. While pyrolysis is a process
of decomposition of the dried MSW, therefore, Ryield was used
to model this process by specifying the yield distribution vector
according to the MSW ultimate analysis [12–14,16,18,20] (calcu-
lated using a FORTRAN program). Rgibbs block is a rigorous reactor
and multiphase equilibrium based on Gibbs free energy minimiza-
tion [14]. And gasification involves numerous decomposition,
recombination and elementary reactions, thus, Rgibbs was pre-
ferred because it is based on the minimization of the total Gibbs
free energy of the product mixture [12,13,15,16]. It can be used
to predict the equilibrium composition of the produced syngas
[16]. However, Rgibbs cannot handle char which is referred to as
‘‘non-conventional’’ [16], therefore, the assumption that char con-
tains only carbon was considered. In the combustion process which
is also based on the principle of minimization of Gibbs free energy,
Rgibbs can also be suitable [14,20]. The gasification process begins
with pyrolysis and continues with combustion, and in summary,
the reaction (1)–(6) in these processes considered are [21]:
C þ O2 ¼ CO2 ; þ393 kJ=mol ð1Þ
C þ 1=2O2 ¼ CO; þ 110 kJ=mol ð2Þ
C þ CO2 ¼ 2CO;  173 kJ=mol ð3Þ
C þ H2 O ¼ CO þ H2 ; 132 kJ=mol ð4Þ
CH4 þ H2 O ¼ CO þ 3H2 ; 206 kJ=mol ð5Þ
CH4 þ 2H2 O ¼ CO2 þ 4H2 ; 165 kJ=mol ð6Þ
In these simulations, the ambient temperature was 25 °C and
the temperature of gasification section was ranged from 500 °C
to 700 °C while that of combustion section was kept at 900 °C; sys-
tem pressure was set at atmosphere pressure; air flow rate de-
pends on the air equivalence ratio which was varied from 0.2 to
0.8; the heat duty was 0 kJ/h in drying section; the solid residue
from gasification section consisted of carbon and ash; the charac-
teristics of MSW was an average value of MSW from different prov-
inces in China and the MSW feed rate was 1.0 kg/h. The
characteristics of MSW are shown in Table 1.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Effect of flue gas and air equivalence ratio on syngas production
In this study, air equivalence ratio represents the ratio of the
amount of introducing air to the amount of air needed for complete
combustion. Obviously, vary of air equivalence ratio will change
the amount of air introduced into the reactor. Therefore, three dif-
ferent reaction conditions can be identified: complete combustion
to CO2, complete gasification to CO and partial combustion (gasifi-
cation) to CO2 and CO. This ratio has a strong effect on syngas pro-
duction. Air equivalence ratio was varied from 0.2 to 0.8 in this
simulation. Effect of flue gas and air equivalence ratio on syngas
60 C. Chen et al. / Fuel 103 (2013) 58–63

Fig. 1. Process flowcharts of municipal solid waste gasification in fixed bed.

Fig. 2. Aspen plus simulation flowchart for Type (a).

production at the gasifier temperature of 700 °C was discussed.
Fig. 4 indicates that CO2 concentration increased significantly
(from 5% to 60%) with the increase of air equivalence ratio while
CO showed an inverse trend (from 47% to 15%). This is because
the increase of air equivalence ratio (means more oxygen) placed
Eq. (1) toward the right. At a lower ratio (<0.4), it can be seen that
CO concentration in Type (a) is higher than that in Type (b). It can
be explained by Eq. (3) which was favoured by the introducing of
CO2 (flue gas) from the combustion section in Type (a). At a higher
ratio, CO concentration decreased in both Types (a) and (b) accord-
ing to Eq. (1) which prevailed over Eq. (2) with the increase of air
equivalence ratio. CH4 concentration decreased as the ratio in-
creased, whilst H2 concentration decreased according to Eqs. (5)
and (6). The same differences of Types (a) and (b) at a lower ratio
can be found that H2 concentration was higher in Type (b) and CH4
concentration was lower in Type (b). As discussed above, CO con-
centration in Type (b) was lower than that in Type (a) at a lower
ratio, thus in Type (b), H2 concentration would be higher while
CH4 concentration would be lower because a lower CO concentra-
tion would placed Eqs. (4)–(6) toward right.
Effect of flue gas and air equivalence ratio on LHV of the syngas
is presented in Fig. 5. The LHV (kJ/N m3) can be defined as:
 C. Chen et al. / Fuel 103 (2013) 58–63
Fig. 3. Aspen plus simulation flowchart for Type (b).
Table 1
Characteristics of MSW.
Moisture (wt%) 48
Proximate analysis (wt% dry basis)
Volatile matter 46.15
Fixed carbon 7.7
Ash 46.15
Ultimate analysis (wt% dry basis)
C 30.77
H 4.62
O 17.3
N 0.77
S 0.39
High heating value (kJ/kg dry basis) 13,076
LHV ¼ ð119950:4  nH2 þ 10103:9  nCO þ 50009:3
 nCH4 Þ=V
where nCO, nH2 and nCH4 are the molar yields of CO, H2, CH4, respec-
tively, V is the volume of syngas (m3). From Eq. (7), we can see the
LHV is dependent on the concentration of combustible gases. It can
be concluded from the discussions of syngas composition above
that the concentration of combustible gas decreased with the in-
crease of air equivalence ratio. As a result, LHV of the syngas would
decrease as the ratio increased and that trend can be found in Fig. 5.
As shown in Fig. 5, LHV in Type (a) was higher than that in Type (b),
which can be explained by that CO and CH4 concentration in Type
(a) was higher than that in Type (b). The maximum value of LHV
was 8100 kJ/N m3 in Type (a) and 6600 kJ/N m3 in Type (b).
Fig. 6 shows the effect of flue gas and air equivalence ratio on
carbon conversion and heat conversion efficiency. The definitions
Fig. 4. Effect of flue gas and air equivalence ratio on gas composition.
61
of carbon conversion and heat conversion efficiency were shown
in Eqs. (8) and (9) respectively:
m1
q¼ ð8Þ
m2
Q V
h¼ ð9Þ
mMSW
In Eqs. (8) and (9), q is the carbon conversion of MSW, m1 is the
weight of carbon in the syngas, kg, m2 is the weight of carbon of
MSW fed into the system, kg, h is heat conversion efficiency of syn-
gas, kJ/kg, Q is the LHV of the syngas (dry) yield in the gasifier,
kJ/N m3, and mMSW is the weight of MSW fed into the system, kg.
As shown in Fig. 6, carbon conversion increased and kept con-
ð7Þ stant when it reached the maximum value as the ratio increased.
Carbon conversion in Type (a) was higher than that in Type (b)
at a lower ratio which can be explained by Eqs. (1)–(3). Heat con-
version efficiency decreased with the increase of air equivalence
ratio. A same difference can be found at a lower ratio that heat con-
version efficiency in Type (a) is higher than that in Type (b). Heat
conversion efficiency in Type (b) reached the maximum value
(about 5700 kJ/kg) at the ratio of 0.3 while heat conversion effi-
ciency in Type (a) reached the maximum value (about 6700 kJ/
kg) at the ratio of 0.2. It can be concluded from the results of Figs.
4–6 that the introduction of flue gas would increase LHV of the
syngas, heat conversion efficiency and carbon conversion at a low-
er air equivalence ratio at a gasification temperature of 700 °C. But
no effect of flue gas on these gasification characteristics can be
found at a higher ratio.
62 C. Chen et al. / Fuel 103 (2013) 58–63
Fig. 5. Effect of flue gas and air equivalence ratio on LHV of the syngas.
Fig. 6. Effect of flue gas and air equivalence ratio on heat conversion efficiency and
carbon conversion.
3.2. Effect of flue gas and gasification temperature on syngas
production
The gasification temperature influences the equilibrium of the
chemical reactions [20]. In this study, effect of flue gas and gasifi-
cation temperature on syngas production at an air equivalence
Fig. 7. Effect of flue gas and gasification temperature on gas composition.
ratio of 0.2 was discussed. As shown in Fig. 7, CO concentration in-
creased with the increase of gasification temperature while CO2
concentration followed an opposed trend. CH4 concentration de-
creased slightly as the gasification temperature increased, while
H2 concentration increased slightly with the increase of gasifica-
tion temperature. Additionally, H2 concentration in Type (b) was
a little higher than that in Type (a), while CO concentration is much
lower in Type (b) compared to Type (a). These trends can be attrib-
uted to the chemical reaction laws: higher temperatures favoured
the products in endothermic reactions, and favoured the reactants
in exothermic reactions. Therefore, with the increase of tempera-
ture, the decrease of CH4 concentration could be ascribed to the
endothermic reaction (5) and (6). The increase of H2 concentration
could be explained by the endothermic reaction (4)–(6), and CO
concentration would increase because endothermic reaction (3)–
(5) are more dominant than exothermic reaction Eq. (2). Although
endothermic reaction Eq. (6) releases CO2 (and the CO2 concentra-
tion should increase), the CO2 concentration decreased as the tem-
perature increased. This is because endothermic reaction Eq. (3)
was more dominant, placing the reaction toward the right, and
resulting in the increase of CO and decrease of CO2 as the temper-
ature increased [22].
Fig. 8 shows that the LHV of both Types (a) and (b) increased
with the increase of gasification temperature. The highest LHV
was about 8000 kJ/m3 at 700 °C for Type (a). It can be seen that
LHV of Type (b) was higher than that of Type (a) in the range from
500 °C to about 650 °C. However, it was lower compared to Type
(a) while the temperature kept rising from about 650 °C to
700 °C. This can be ascribed to the unfavourable endothermic reac-
tion Eq. (3) at lower gasification temperature. Therefore, the influ-
ence of the increase of CO concentration with the increase of
temperature in Eq. (3) was prevailed over by the influence of high-
er CO2 concentration in Type (a) at the introduction of flue gas.
Higher CO2 concentration decreases the concentration of other
combustible gases in the syngas, which leads to a decrease of the
LHV. But as the temperature rose above 650 °C, the higher gasifica-
tion temperature favoured the product (CO) in endothermic reac-
tion Eq. (3), and Eq. (3) became more dominant.
As shown in Fig. 9, increasing gasification temperature led to an
increase of heat conversion efficiency and carbon conversion. Both
of the two parameters of Type (b) were higher than that of Type (a)
at lower gasification temperature. However, from around 550 °C to
700 °C, those two parameters of Type (b) were lower than that of
Type (a) and the difference increased with the increase of gasifica-
tion temperature. These trends can be explained by that the in-
crease of gasification temperature in both types would place the
endothermic reaction (3)–(5) toward right which result in the
 C. Chen et al. / Fuel 103 (2013) 58–63
Fig. 8. Effect of flue gas and gasification temperature on LHV of the syngas.
Fig. 9. Effect of flue gas and gasification temperature on heat conversion efficiency
and carbon conversion.
increase of carbon conversion and heat conversion efficiency. And
with the increase of gasification temperature, the introduction of
flue gas (CO2) in Type (a) would result in more CO according to
Eq. (3) that means higher carbon conversion and heat conversion
efficiency than that in Type (b). It can be concluded from the re-
sults of Figs. 7–9 that the introduction of flue gas would lead to
an increase of heat conversion efficiency and carbon conversion
but a lower LHV of the syngas below 650 °C.
4. Conclusions
In this paper, the simulation of MSW gasification in two types of
fixed bed reactors is proposed using Aspen plus. The effect of flue
gas from the combustion section on the composition and LHV of
syngas, heat conversion efficiency, and carbon conversion at differ-
ent gasification temperatures and air equivalence ratios has been
discussed. The simulation results from this study were summa-
rized as follows.
63
(1) Flue gas from combustion section had a strong influence on
the syngas production from MSW gasification at a gasifica-
tion temperature of 700 °C. It increased heat conversion effi-
ciency, carbon conversion and LHV of the syngas at a lower
air equivalence ratio.
(2) Flue gas did not have any effect on the syngas production at
a higher air equivalence ratio.
(3) The introduction of flue gas would lead to a significantly
increase of heat conversion efficiency and carbon conversion
with the increase of gasification temperature at an air equiv-
alence ratio of 0.2, but a lower LHV of the syngas below
650 °C.
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful for the financial support of this work by
the Key Science and Technology Projects of Zhejiang Province, Chi-
na (No. 2008C13022-3).
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