4. Biomass and Waste Gasification

The potential of biomass as an abundant and distributed source of energy has been extensively investigated in the last decades; this growing interest is due to the increasing attention to avoid greenhouse gases accumulating in the atmosphere. Among available biomass thermal conversion processes, the most feasible option, closest to industrial exploitation, is the gasification technology that produces a syngas rich of hydrogen, carbon monoxide and, at a lower content, methane. In addition to efficient power generation, it allows synthesis of commodity chemicals from a renewable source, adopting a so called polygeneration strategy. Despite the universally recognised environmental advantages, open issues remain the higher costs of power generation systems based on biomass with respect to fossil fuels, and technologic improvements of hot gas cleaning and conditioning devices to increase the efficiency of the utilization of thermal and chemical energy of the product gas.