Summary: | 碩士 === 義守大學 === 生物技術與化學工程研究所 === 100 === The ever-increasing price of the fossil fuel has prompted ever-growing interests globally in the development and production of alternative energy sources. Biomass energy is one of the promising alternative energy, and yet renewal and sustainable. However, most of the biofuels currently produced come from edible-portion of the biomass, i.e. sugars and starch, and hence are competing with the food for human and the feed for animals. As a matter of fact, this has resulted in the sky-rocketing food price in the years of 2007-8, and the suffering of the poor worldwide. On the contrary, cellulose is non-edible, and will not reduce the food supply when used for energy. This is an attempt to transform cellulose into hydrogen-rich gaseous fuel via hydro-chemical partial oxidation. Since the biose of cellulose is not commercially available, lactose is used as a model compound instead.Experiments were conducted with a small batch-type autoclave. The major operating parameters investigated include: the reaction temperature, from 350 to 600 ℃, the reaction pressure, 10 to 25 MPa, the dosage of oxidizing agent, from 0.35 and 0.5 stoichiometric equivalence, and the concentration of lactose in the feed, 0.125 to 1.0 M. Gaseous products from the reaction were collected and analyzed. The gaseous output consists mainly of H2, CO, CH4 and CO2 as well as small amount of C2H6. The highest energy conversion achieved is around 53%.
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