Proceedings of International Symposium on Sustainable Energy and Environmental Protection (ISSEEP) 2009 Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 23-26 Nopember 2009

The AspenTM Software Simulation of a Peat Torrefaction System Using RYield and SSplit Block as Reactor Model
Haryadi1*, Toto Hardianto2, Ari D. Pasek2, Aryadi Suwono2, Riza Azhari2, W. Ardiansyah2 1 Politeknik Negeri Bandung, Bandung, Indonesia 2 Institut Teknologi Bandung, Bandung, Indonesia
*

Corresponding author: haryadi331@students.itb.ac.id

ABSTRACT Peat could be fourth energy resources in Indonesia after oil, coal, and natural gas. With 27 million hectares of peat resources area, Indonesia is the third largest peat reserve in the world, after Canada and Russia. In the current years, peat utilization as energy is very limited. The development of peat utilization as new energy resources is expected to support the objective of the Indonesian National Energy Management Blueprint. However, the environmental aspect of this matter should be emphasized. Torrefaction is a thermal process applied to organic materials operated at medium temperature in absence of oxygen and at relatively long residence times, typically 10 to 60 minutes. The properties, such as heating value and fix char content, are improved through limited devolatilization that occurs under these conditions. The heating value of the torrefied peat improved to the level between subbituminous C to bituminous high volatile C of ASTM D 388 coal classification. This research used Aspen Plus 11 software for simulation of a laboratory scale continuous peat torrefaction reactor system and Using RYield and SSplit as reactor model. The capacity of this system is 16 kg/h of raw material. The system consists of a dryer, a torrefaction reactor, a cooler and supporting facilities. The dryer and the torrefaction reactor employ fluidized bed method for the process. The raw material of the system is natural peat with 60% moisture content wet base. The dryer uses hot drying air to reduce peat moisture content and increase peat temperature from ambient temperature to process temperature. The torrefaction reactor uses superheated steam to increase peat temperature to 300C. The torrecation reactor inert atmosphere is provided by the steam release from the peat it self. The peat is held at this temperature for about 20 minutes. The model shows better flexibility to vary wider range of dry peat moisture content. The simulation showed that the superheated steam consumption for the reactor heating and the system torrefaction process efficiency greatly depend on moisture content of dry peat. 1 INTRODUCTION

Oil, coal, and natural gas still become primary energy resources. The world oil consumption in year 1965 had already reach 31.25 million barrels per day, while Indonesian oil consumption is 123,000 barrel per day. Meanwhile, in year 2004, the world oil consumption increased to 80.76 million barrel per day and for Indonesian 1.15 milion barrel per day [1]. The increase of world population and developement of technology cause energy consumption rises rapidly. Therefore, alternative energy resources must be developed with equivelent quality as oil, coal and natural gas. For Indonesia, peat could become the new source of energy after the three primary sources mentioned above, because Indonesia is the third lagest peat area reserve in the world. The area of peat reserve proximately 27 million hectares [2], with potential reserve equal to 200 billion ton [3]. However, due to peat low quality as source of energy, it requires to be improved in order to be used

as new energy recources. An environmental impact analysis also should be conducted if the usage of peat will be realized massively. Theoretical and experimental researches on upgrading the quality of peat as solid fuel through drying method have been conducted [4]. Further theoritical study indicates that energy density of peat still can be improved with advanced treatment, so called torrefaction process. Therefore this research will study the upgrading of peat quality as source of energy, especially increasing its heating value, through torrefaction process. Based on latest research, application of this method to wood briquette can improve its HHV up to 15% [5], while empty oil palm bunches up to 25% [6]. Improvement of peat heating value by torrefaction process can be as high as heating value of bituminous coal [7]. Long term research focussing on increasing the quality of peat as solid fuel should be conducted to improve economic value of peat. To achieve this goal, several stages of research are still required. This research is only representing the early stage, which main goal is to examine the influence of process temperature and time reaction to thermodynamics properties of product in peat torrefaction process. 2 PEAT TORREFACTION

Torrefaction is a method of thermochemical process to increase solid fuel heating value, especially an organic matter. In biomass torrefaction process, the organic matters experience treatment of heat at medium temperature in a condition without oxygen, with target to increase its energy density by decomposition of certain fractions. The effect of decomposition process is expected to degrade atomic ratio of oxygen to carbon, hence the heating value will increase. Some factors that influence the product characteristic in torrefaction process are process temperature, resident time, and particle size. The product from torrefaction process can be used directly (such as solid fuel briquett), mixed together with other fuel (co-combustion), or as raw material for gasification. The main fractions of biomass are: hemicelluloses, lignin and cellulose, which all together called lignocelluloses. Hemicelluloses decomposes at a temperature of 225 to 325 C, cellulose decomposes at a temperature of 305 to 375 C, and lignin decomposed at a temperature of 250 to 500 C [8]. Among the three compounds of lignocelluloses, hemicelluloses are the most reactive fraction, and the most easily decomposed. Concentration of hemicelluloses in biomass is quiet high. Biomass torrefaction process is aimed to decompose hemicelluloses. Therefore, the process temperature of biomass torrefaction is approximately same with biomass hemicelluloses decomposition temperature, which is between 225 to 300 C [5, 6, 8]. Naturally, peat is partially or incomplete decomposed biomass and deposited together with complementary minerals. Like other organic fuels, main constituent of peat are carbon (C), oxygen (O) and hydrogen (H). If peat decomposition level is high, the content of C will increase and the content of O will decrease. Peat contains much less hemicelluloses than biomass. Thus, the torrefaction process of peat must be done at slightly higher temperature than biomass torrefaction process [7]. 3 3.1 THE TORREFACTION PROCESS SYSTEMS Brief description of the software

The software package can be used in almost every aspect of process engineering from design stage to cost and profitability analysis. It has a built-in model library for distillation columns, separators, heat exchangers, reactors, etc. Custom or propriety models can extend its model library. These user models are created with FortranTM subroutines or ExcelTM worksheets and added to its model library. Using Visual BasicTM to add input forms for the user models makes them indistinguishable from the built-in ones. It has a built-in property databank for thermodynamic and

physical parameters. During the calculation of the flow sheet, any missing parameter can be estimated automatically by various group contribution methods. 3.2 Modeling of Peat Continuous Torrefaction System

The system capacity is design for 16 kg/h raw peat with 60% moisture content wet base, which is determined based on drying bed capacity that already exists. Maximum temperature of steam out of superheater is 500 C. The schematic of laboratory-scale peat continuous torrefaction system is shown in Figure 1. The system consists of a dryer, a torrefaction reactor, and supporting facilities. The dryer and the torrefaction reactor employ fluidized bed method for the process. The dryer uses hot drying air to reduce peat moisture content and increase peat temperature from ambient temperature to process temperature. The torrefaction reactor uses superheated steam to increase peat temperature to 300C. The torrecation reactor inert atmosphere is provided by the steam release from the peat it self, which is originated from peat moisture. The dried peat is held at this temperature for about 20 minutes.

Figure 1. Scheme of peat torrefaction process system in laboratory-scale The expected reaction temperature of torrefaction is 300 C, with a rection time of 15 minutes, which will produce torrefied peat with equivalent heating value of sub bituminous B coal, approximately 5600 kcal/kg HHV [7]. The reaction temperature affects the increasing of heating value. If the reaction temperature too low, it will not produce a product with high heating value, while if the temperature too high, the process will require more utilities and lead to lower mass flow rate of the products. Hence, the process temperature must be selected based on these considerations. Regarding residence time, processing the peat for more than 30 minutes will not increase the calorific value of the product significantly. The simulation was performed at various moisture content of peat out of drying bed, ranging from 12% to 32%, with intervals of 4%. Schematic of modeling peat continuous torrefaction system using Aspen Plus 11 can be seen in Figure 2. The model employs energy recovery from waste heat, which is not present in Figure 1. In this model, the drying process will be modeled with an RStoic block where wet peat and dry air entered as input (feed), followed by a Flash2 block which has two output streams. Peat is considered as nonconventional solids with distributed particle size (NCPSD). In this case the necessary data that must be supplied is proximate, ultimate and sulfur analysis. Moisture content of wet peat from proximate analysis result is used as input. The output from RStoic block is a single

stream containing peat with reduced moisture content and drying air with increasing moisture content. This output stream then feeds to Flash2 block which will separate dry peat and wet air, on each output stream.

Figure 2. Schematic of modeling torrefaction system using Aspen Plus 11 Torrefaction reactor is modeled by an RYield block. RYield is a reactor model with very flexible input and output, can be conventional compounds or nonconventional compounds, and able to receive or release heat. To make this decomposition reaction maintain the principle of atomic balance, the bookkeeping of atoms must be made manually, and the results become input for RYield. SSplit is a separator for solids from gases or liquids. To make atomic balance on the RYield block, several informations are required. These informations can be obtained from: proximate and ultimate analysis of reactants, proximate and ultimate analysis of solid product, and gas composition of torrefaction decomposition results, which can be obtained by experiments and measurements. Torrefaction gas composition is obtained by taking samples of gas that formed from the torrefaction process followed by gas chromatography analysis. With the assumption that all C atoms are released as gas compounds at decomposition process (as shown on the results of gas chromatography analysis), the balance of C atoms can be made. From C atomic balance, the mass ratio of C contain gases to the overall product (solid and gas) is obtained, because the mass of solid product can be retrieved by experiment. Next, by using the balance of H and O atoms, H2O formed from the decomposition process is obtained. Table 1 shows the result of atomic bookkeeping of torrefaction decomposition process of peat with moisture content of 12% as reactants. Some suporting equipments are showed in Figure 2. Firstly, the drying air is heated by torrefation gases, then heated agin with waste heat from the steam that heating the torrefation reactor. A boiler supplies steam to the superheater, and the superheater supplies superheated steam to the torrefaction for heating purpose. The torrefaction gases are burned after separated from moisture, and heated the boiler feed water.

Table 1. Result of atomic bookkeeping of torrefaction decomposition process with peat (moisture content of 12%) reactants Components Raw Material Torrefied Peat 300C 15' H2O from Moist H2O from Dcmp CO2 CO CH4 C3H6 SO2 H2 Sum of Products Total 113,64 71,59 8,92 6,96 11,84 4,15 0,65 9,29 0,26 0,00 113,65 Moist Ash 13,64 4,72 1,80 1,80 C H gram 59,48 4,80 2,55 N 0,96 0,96 O 32,65 15,35 S 0,31 0,18 0,6300 0,1397 0,77 3,23 1,78 0,48 7,96 6,19 8,61 2,37 0,1042 0,0366 0,0057 0,0817 0,0023 0,0000 1,0000 Yield (-)

46,03

0,16 1,33 0,13 0,13 0,31

1,80

59,48

4,81

0,96

32,65

This model was compared with the previous one which use three blocks, namely HeatX, RYield, and Ssplit as the torrefaction reactor model [9]. 4 RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Firstly, the model input was varied in the system steam consumption, while raw material feeding rate remain constants. It is obvious that the reactor temperature depends on the system steam consumption. High steam consumtion will increase the reactor temperature. Further sumulation shows that increasing moisture content of dry peat reduces the reactor temperature. These results are depicted by Figure 2.

Figure 3. The reactor temperature againts the system steam consumtion for constant raw material feeding rate The Figure 4 below shows the reactor heating steam consumption and the system efficiency curve againts dry peat moisture content, with constant reactor temperature of 300C. LHV of the raw material and the product are 1529 kcal/kg and 5409 kcal/kg respectively, while the product mass flow rate is assumed constant, 4.63 kg/hr, based on experimental data. The system efficiency is defined as LHV of the product devided by sum of raw material LHV, boiler and superheater heat requirements. In Figure 3 the superheated steam consumption for the reactor heating and the system

torrefaction process efficiency greatly depend on moisture content of dry peat. However, the lowest moisture content of dry peat depends on ability of the drier.

Figure 2. The reactor heating steam consumption and efficiency curve againts dry peat moisture content The model shows better flexibility to vary wider range of dry peat moisture content, without error message, except for the low moisture content of dry peat. However, this model has drawback as the absence information about temperature different between with and without decomposition. 5 CONCLUSION

It is concluded that the superheated steam consumption for the reactor heating and the system torrefaction process efficiency greatly depend on moisture content of dry peat. However, the lowest moisture content of dry peat depends on ability of the drier. The model has lack the ability to predict the torrefaction gas composition. Aspen Plus 11 provides several reactors, namely RStoic, RYield, REquil, RGibs, RPlug, RStr and RBatch. RYield is the only reactor that makes solid to solid and conventional compounds incomplete reaction possible. To overcome this problem, further development still needs.

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[6] Haryadi, Aryadi Suwono, Toto Hardianto, Ari Darmawan Pasek, Heating Value Improvement of Palm Empty Fruit Bunch as Solid Fuel through Torrefaction Process, Proc. Sem. Int. Conf. Cooling and Heating Tech. 2008, Jinhae, Korea, 2008. [7] Haryadi, Aryadi Suwono, Toto Hardianto, Ari Darmawan Pasek, Peningkatan Nilai Kalor Gambut sebagai Bahan Bakar Padat Melalui Proses Torefaksi, Proc. Sem. Nasional Pengembangan Kebijakan, Managemen dan Teknologi di Bidang Energi dan Lingkungan, Bandung, 2009. [8] Prins, Mark J., Ptasinski, Krzysztof J., Janssen, Frans J.J.G., Torrefaction of wood part 1. Weight loss kinetics, J. Anal. Appl. Pyrolysis, Vol. 77, 28-34, 2006. [9] Toto Hardianto, Haryadi, Willy Ardiansyah, Riza Azhari, Ari D. Pasek, Aryadi Suwono, The Simulation of a Laboratory Scale Peat Continuous Reactor Torrefaction System, Proc. International Conference on Fluid and Thermal Energy Conversion 2009, Tongyeong, South Korea, 2009 [10] Aspen Technology, Inc., Aspen Plus, Getting started modeling process with solid, Cambridge, Massecussets, 2001.