Kinetics Modeling of Pyrolysis and Gasification of Palm Kernel Shell for Hydrogen Production Using Simulink

Hydrogen is a potential alternative energy source over fossil fuels when produced from biomass via thermal conversion process. This is indeed attractive as Malaysia is having abundant biomass resources. In this paper, a mathematical model is developed to predict the reaction kinetics behavior of a thermal conversion process of palm kernel shell in the presence of steam and CaO for hydrogen production. The work is motivated by the need to study the technical feasibility of the process under different operating conditions. Utilizing experimental data on palm kernel shell thermal conversion, kinetic model parameters are extracted and used to develop a model in MATLAB/Simulink that allows a parametric study on the performance of the process. Overall, assuming that the thermal conversion process is assumed to occur in two stages i.e. pyrolysis and gasification, the model predicts a maximum hydrogen production of approximately 40 mol%. Generally, the model is capable to capture the process kinetics behavior. The model can be extended for future work on energy efficiency and optimization of the process.