Aguado-Molina, RoqueVera, DavidJurado-Melguizo, FranciscoBeltrán-Maza, Gabriel2024-09-262024-09-2620222190-682310.1007/s13399-021-02231-0https://hdl.handle.net/10953/3251This research work proposes an integrated gasification plant for simultaneous generation of renewable electricity and drying of olive pomace, a thick sludge with a moisture content close to 60–70% (wet basis), which constitutes by far the most abundant by-product in the Spanish olive oil industry. Due to its massive rate of production and increasing associated transportation costs, olive pomace management currently represents a substantial expense for oil mills. The integrated gasification plant, which can be installed directly at oil mills, consists of a pelletizer, a downdraft gasifier under autothermal operation fueled with dried olive pomace pellets, a producer gas cooling and cleaning unit and a microturbine as power generation unit. The wet olive pomace continuously produced in oil mills is eventually dried in a co-current flow rotary drum dryer with the hot exhaust gases leaving the microturbine at temperatures close to 300 °C, allowing a self-sufficient operation of the integrated gasification plant. The integrated gasification plant was modeled using Aspen Plus® process simulator. The developed model was validated against experimental and simulation results of relevant works. Under optimum operating conditions, the electrical efficiency of the proposed plant is 18.8%, while the additional drying stage allows achieving an overall efficiency of 51.0%. Electricity consumption by the pelletizer and ancillary equipment represents 10–20% of the net electric power generation from the microturbine. However, since the integrated gasification plant is fueled with an inexpensive by-product of olive oil production that is massively produced on-site, the plant performance parameters are remarkably satisfactory.engAtribución-NoComercial-SinDerivadas 3.0 Españahttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/es/Olive pomaceDowndraft gasifierProducer gasMicroturbineRotary drum dryerWaste-to-energyinfo:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess