Modelling desulfurization of Biogas from Biomass gasification plants

This Thesis originates from the demand of a freeware useful to describe the behavior of a filter for biogas. The whole project was done in an Austrian research institute, BioEnergy2020+, based in Graz. Particular attention is focused on hydrogen sulphide (H2S), which is one of the major biogas pollutants. Concentrations above 140 mg m–3 are harmful for human health. The first part of the thesis is a brief explanation of why biogas and biomasses are important in an optic of reduction of greenhouse gases in the European Union, then is shown a brief review of the most promising technologies for biogas purification from H2S. An Impregnated Activated Carbon - Packed Bed Reactor is chosen to do the filtration. To evaluate the calculation, it was used an original script, written in Julia Language. A system of Partial Differential Equations was developed using the finite differences method in order to have the concentration of pollutants in various time-steps. Multiple iterations were made to check the effective duration of the filter and when it needs a regeneration. The last part shows the results discussion and the comparison with an existing study on H2S pollutant, made with a proprietary software (COMSOL).