The problem of estimating the performance of the combustion
system fuelled by the producer gas has been approached
by some authors. As an example Jenkins et al. [10] propose to
normalize the heating values by the total mass of products or
reactants. The problem appears more specifically in internal
combustion engines, since these are volumetric machines in
which it can be expected that the relevant properties are those
of the admitted gas–air mixture. Then it is important to have a
good evaluation of the energy content of the producer gas
properties per unit volume.
Different researchers are working on the problem of
coupling a biomass gasifier and an internal combustion engine
from an experimental point of view [11–14]. Other researchers
use computational techniques to estimate the influence of the
gas composition on the engine performance [15,16]. The
present work is aimed to the prediction of the performance of
RICE fuelled by a producer gas. The prediction has two levels.
The first level is based on an Engine Fuel Quality factor and
provides an estimation of the power attainable in the engine
once the composition of the producer gas is known. The second
level is based on the use of a combustion model and several
specific data relative to the producer gas combustion speed.
This second approach provides a more detailed information of
engine performance in terms of instantaneous pressures inside
the cylinder and the derived parameters, such as the indicated
mean pressure and efficiency.