Prediction of the autoignition delay time of producer gas from biomass gasification

The greenhouse effect and the increasing demand for energy have encouraged the use of alternative fuels, with agricultural and forestry biomass waste being two of the main renewable sources that European and Spanish policies have been promoting during the last several years. In this article, theoretical results for the chemical autoignition delay time of producer gas obtained from the gasification of lignocellulosic biomass are presented. These results, together with those obtained in a previous work related to the laminar flame speed of the gas, are of great interest both for understanding the chemical kinetic mechanisms that control the fuel oxidation process and for the development of combustion models that provide significant information to be used as a tool for the optimization and design of internal combustion engines. The CHEMKIN software, in conjunction with the GRI-Mech chemical reaction mechanism, has been used to compute the autoignition delay time for different producer gas compositions, diffe...