Abstract
An experiment was conducted in order to investigate gasification characteristics of rice husks in a fixed bed, which was a pre-step to design a continuous gasification system. Two air supply levels for gasification were chosen and their effects on the producer gas amount and producer gas composition were discussed. The main components of the producer gas were CO, $CO_2$, $O_2$, $H_2$ and THC (Total HydroCarbon). As airflow rate decreased, more producer gas was produced. The peak amount of CO, $H_2$ and THC were 28%, 7.5% and 0.68% in volume when constant airflow rate of $3.36\;m^3/s$ was used in the batch operation. About 4.5 kg of ash (9%) and condensed water including tars of 6 kg (11%) were produced from 50 kg rice husks in the gasification. Excluding the byproducts, all rice husks seemed to be transformed into producer gas. This gasification study was conducted prior to developing a continuous gasification system for biomass including agricultural byproducts.
