The Potential of Thermal Plasma Gasification of Olive Pomace Charcoal

Annually, the olive oil industry generates a significant amount of by-products, such as olive pomace, olive husks, tree prunings, leaves, pits, and branches. Therefore, the recovery of these residues has become a major challenge in Mediterranean countries. The utilization of olive industry residues has received much attention in recent years, especially for energy purposes. Accordingly, this primary experimental study aims at investigating the potential of olive biomass waste for energy recovery in terms of synthesis gas (or syngas) production using the thermal arc plasma gasification method. The olive charcoal made from the exhausted olive solid waste (olive pomace) was chosen as a reference material for primary experiments with known composition from the performed proximate and ultimate analysis. The experiments were carried out at various operational parameters: raw biomass and water vapour flow rates and the plasma generator power. The producer gas involved principally CO, H-2, and CO2 with the highest concentrations of 41.17%, 13.06%, and 13.48%, respectively. The produced synthesis gas has a lower heating value of 6.09 MJ/nm(3) at the H2O/C ratio of 3.15 and the plasma torch had a power of 52.2 kW.