Public Defence: Nora Furuvik

Nora Furuvik in the PhD programme Process-, Energy- and Automation Engineering at the University of South-Eastern Norway, Faculty of Technology, Natural Sciences and Maritime Sciences (TNM) will be defending her thesis for the degree of philosophiae doctor (PhD).

04 Mar

Practical information

  • Date: 4 March 2022
  • Time: All day
  • Location: Porsgrunn, auditorium B-133 and on Zoom
  • Download calendar file

    • Both the trial lecture and the PhD defence are open to the public on campus (B-133) or on Zoom.

    Participate on Zoom

    Programme

    Trial lecture 09.30: "Future challenges of liquid biofuels in Norway"

    PhD defence 12.00: "Modelling of ash melts in gasification of biomass"

    Evaluation committee

    • First opponent: Professor, ph.d. Eva Thorin, Mälardalens högskola
    • Second opponent: Professor, ph.d. Marcus Öhman, Luleå University of Techology
    • Administrator of the committee and third opponent: Førsteamanuensis, ph.d. Amaranath S. Kumara

    Principal supervisor:
    Professor Britt Moldestad (USN)

    Co-supervisors:
    Professor Marianne Sørflaten Eikeland
    Førsteamanuensis Rajan Kumar Thapa (both USN)

The tilte of the thesis:  "Modelling of ash melts in gasification of biomass".

Link to the thesis (openarchive.usn.no)

Summary: 

Nora FuruvikThe need for advanced biofuels produced from sustainable sources is stressed, both on national and international level. A well-known process for production of biofuels involves biomass gasification in fluidized beds, a thermochemical process that converts the biomass into a high-quality syngas in the presence of heat and a gasifying agent. The syngas is composed of mainly hydrogen and carbon monoxide and can be further processed into biofuels. However, processing biomass-derived fuels in fluidized beds suffers from ash related issues. The major problem is associated with molten biomass ash and the formation of agglomerates, which cause fluid dynamic disturbances in the bed. If not counteracted, the bed disturbances might lead to operational problems resulting in decreased efficiency, high maintenance costs and unscheduled shutdowns.

This PhD work contributes to the field of biomass-to-liquid transport biofuels and is related to the operational challenges with ash melting in fluidized bed systems. The ash related challenges are the main obstacles for the acceleration of the implementation and commercialization of the conversion of biomass to biofuels via gasification.

This thesis addresses the key issues related to biomass ash behaviour during gasification of biomass in fluidized beds. The PhD work has combined experimental works and CPFD simulations. The presented results generated new sets of data that could form the basis for a numerical model capable of predicting the formation of agglomerates and de-fluidized bed conditions based on the ash composition and the bed operating temperature. The developed model and method are new scientific tools that can be used to determine the critical amount of ash in fluidized bed systems, and thus provide the necessary tools to accomplish a more efficient and economical utilization of biomass in the future.

The research study was founded by the Research Council of Norway, Programme for Energi Research (EnergiX), project 280892 FLASH.