Ecological impacts from syngas burning in internal combustion engine: Technical and economic aspects

This paper evaluates and quantifies the environmental impact from the use of syngas in internal combustion engines associated with downdraft gasifier, considering technical, economical and ecological aspects. The ecological efficiency concept depends on the environmental impact caused by CO(2), SO(2), NO(x) and particulate material (MP) emissions. The emission factors obtained from syngas burned in an internal combustion engines is compared to emission factors obtained from gasoline burn, biodiesel burn, natural gas burn and diesel burn, and were calculated separately. This paper considers technical and economic aspects such as: mass flow of syngas, exhaust gases, inlet air in gasifier and inlet air in ICE; heat capacity of syngas; thermal efficiency and electricity efficiency of ICE, gasifier cold efficiency, system efficiency; electricity costs production, syngas costs production, hot water costs production and expected annual saving. In an economical point view, considering the annual interest rates and the amortization periods, the costs of production of electrical energy and hot water were calculated, taking into account the investment, the operation and the maintenance cost of the equipments. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.