Production and utilization of renewable and sustainable gaseous fuel for power generation applications: A review of literature

Alternative fuels have numerous advantages compared to fossil fuels as they are renewable and biodegradable besides providing energy security and foreign exchange saving addressing environmental concerns, and socio-economic issues as well. Therefore renewable fuels can be predominantly used as fuel for transportation and power generation applications. In view of this exhaustive experiments on the use of producer gas for both spark ignition (SI) and compression ignition (CI) engine applications for short and long term trial runs have been reported in the literature. Today, the use of biomass derived producer gas is more reliant for addressing rural power generation and is a promising technique for controlling both NOx and soot emission levels. Researchers have found that, the brake thermal efficiency of producer gas operated single and dual-fuel engines were far lower compared to diesel/biodiesel operated engine and suggested that, this can be improved by improving the fuel properties, adopting good operating parameters or altering engine design. In order to address this, many researchers/scientists have proposed different solutions for enhancing the performance of a producer gas operated engine. Majority of the research work is focused on the utilization of compressed natural gas (CNG) and liquefied petroleum gas. (LPG) in engines operated on both single and dual fuel mode. However, use of producer gas in engines still needs more detailed studies, as this area is less investigated. Literature review suggests that the combustion characteristics of the producer gas operated engines need extensive research for a long-term use in both gas and dual-fuel engine. In this context, this paper mainly presents a literature review based on the utilization of producer gas as fuel for transport and power generation applications. Based on the review of literatures, it can be concluded that this area requires more research with long term engine operation. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.