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The growing need to reduce the environmental impact of the modern lifestyle imposes a continuous development of novel technologies aimed at a severe reduction of pollutant emissions in order to ensure a tolerable quality of life in metropolitan areas. Among potential alternatives, particular attention has been recently addressed toward the exploitation of residual biomass and wastes as sources for syngas production by thermo-chemical processes for heat and power production. Fruits processing industries generate important amount of residues, which must be managed properly by recycling, incineration or land filling. Due to the high carbon content, these residues represent a significant source of energy that could be valorized by gasification processes. Hence, our attention was focused on the energy recovery from orange peels residues produced by a Sicilian agro-industrial company by steam gasification. Thermodynamic and experimental analysis were carried out. Experiments were performed in a fixed bed laboratory scale reactor working with catalytic materials (Ni/Al2O3, MgO and dolomite mineral) with the biomass in order to investigate the influence of experimental conditions on the outlet stream compositions, mainly in terms of hydrogen content of the produced syngas. Results were compared to thermodynamic data in order to gain information of the experimental method used. The results have confirmed successfully the experimental results compared with the simulation data. The highest concentration (65.9%) of hydrogen volume in the syngas mixture was reached with dolomite mineral as catalyst., Proceedings of the 24th European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 6-9 June 2016, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pp. 918-921

Il progetto "Centro per la promozione dell'innovazione ed il trasferimento delle tecnologie energetiche" ha come obiettivo l'integrazione di tecnologie energetiche innovative nel settore della produzione di energia e dei trasporti, con particolare riferimento ai trasporti navali ed alle tecnologie dell'idrogeno. Il progetto è finalizzato a creare una struttura di ricerca, completa di apparecchiature scientifiche e stazioni di prova che consentano di svolgere specifici e qualificanti test su sistemi energetici che utilizzano tecnologie energetiche innovative, ed è finanziato in parte nell'ambito dell'A.P.Q. Ricerca (Prog. RS-17) ed in parte nell'ambito di un Accordo Istituzionale di Programma (AIP) tra Ministero Ambiente e Tutela del Territorio, Assessorato Industria Regione Siciliana e Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.

Catalytic and technological aspects involved in the use of bio-ethanol as a fuel to produce hydrogen in both DIR-MCFC and IIR-MCFC have been considered. The presence of huge amount of water seems not to significantly affect the electric and thermal efficiencies of the overall process. In MCFC conditions the ethanol is completely converted but thehydrogen productivity is linked to the catalyst efficiency in converting methane formed through a mechanism which foresees as the first step the dehydrogenation of ethanol to acetaldehyde andas a second step the decomposition of acetaldehyde to CO and CH4. Potassium-doped Ni/MgO, Ni/La2O3 and Rh/MgO resulted to be the more promising catalysts to be used for the hydrogen production by steam-reforming of bio-ethanol. Coke formation can be drastically depressed by adding to the reaction stream a low amount of oxygen. Indirect internal reforming configuration should be the more appropriate to be operated with a bio-ethanol since the large amount of water involved in the reforming process reduces the concentration of un-reacted methane.