DEVELTAR project was aimed to investigate a device for the removal of tars (cracking) from pyrolysis and gasification gaseous effluents in order to improve their quality as fuel. Tars are condensed and collected by cooling the gaseous effluents than transferred by a wet film of oil to an electricity based technologies with high power and low energy such as microwaves that was extensively examined for this specific purpose. The device developed during the research project was able to use the electrical energy efficiently concentrated towards the disruption of tar molecules, minimizing energy losses through a proper geometrical configuration and setup of process parameters. The main advantage of these technologies is the possibility to concentrate most of the energy on the target molecules avoiding a general increase of the overall energetic level (temperature). The electrical device is not intended for a specific pyrolysis or gasification technology, but as wide-ranging add-on module to be coupled within the gas purification line. The validation at industrial level of the abovementioned technologies, currently known at fundamental research level only, was done at the end of the project.

Proceedings of the 23rd European Biomass Conference and Exhibition, 1-4 June 2015, Vienna, Austria, pp. 1708-1711