Alcoholic fuels
This could be fortuitous at modest scales because oxygen is relatively costly (Consonni
and Larson 1994a). However, for the production of methanol from biomass,
the use of air increases the volume of inert (N
2
) gas that would have to be carried
through all the downstream reactors. Therefore, the use of oxygen thus improves
the economics of synthesis gas processing. Air-fired, directly heated gasifiers are
considered not to be suitable before methanol production.
This gasifier produces a CO
2
rich gas. The CH
4
fraction could be reformed
to hydrogen, or be used in a gas turbine. The H
2
:CO ratio (1.4:1) is attractive to
produce methanol, although the large CO
2
content lowers the overall...
