Designing, Building, and Testing a micro Combined Heat and Power (mCHP) Gasifier using Wood and Solid Waste as Fuel

The Centers of Research Excellence in Science and Technology-Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (CREST-PRF) track within the CREST program supports beginning CREST Center investigators with significant potential and provides them with training and research experiences that will broaden perspectives, facilitate interdisciplinary interactions and establish them in positions of leadership within the scientific community. This CREST-PRF project is aligned with the research focus of the CREST Bioenergy Center for Aquatic Chemistry at the North Carolina Agricultural & Technical University. The goal of this research is to design and build a quiet, small-scale trash shredder and chipper that can process bulk wood and household waste (HW) to feed into a unit that converts the material to electricity. The gasification process is used in Europe, Japan, and some companies in the United States. The novelty of the proposed research is to design and test a small-scale gasification unit that has the ability to handle household waste. Successful implementation of the proposed work has the potential to reduce landfill space, assist those in the developing world and provide a research opportunity for undergraduate students.

The overarching goal of this research and the sponsoring NSF CREST Bioenergy Center is to expand the use and availability of bioenergy from biomass. This research will work towards providing off-grid locations a method to generate bioelectricity from trash and wood on a small scale. The proposed work intends to achieve the following quantitative objectives: (1) Testing of different feedstocks in the gasifier that represent combustible components of household waste. (2) Investigating the effect of varying the moisture content of the feedstock by changing the pretreatment drying time and measure the effect on the electricity produced and overall system efficiency, (3) Varying the exhaust recycling ratio and measuring any improvement in syngas composition as well as the effect on production efficiency. (4) Finally, a life cycle assessment (LCA) will be conducted of the gasification unit to determine if it is better for the environment to gasify, compost, or recycle each category of waste. The LCA will consider different environmental measures (e.g., greenhouse gas emissions, water quality impact, human health impacts). For each of the four objectives, chemical process simulations will be compared to the field results of the gasification unit. It is expected that this research will result in two or three peer-reviewed journal publications. Undergraduate students will participate in the scientific research process and will be trained in lab and field testing, computer modeling, and journal paper writing.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.