The access to electricity has increased worldwide, growing from 60 million additional consumers per year in 2000–2012 to 100 million per year in 2012–2016. Despite this growth, approximately 675 million people will still lack access to electricity in 2030, indicating that electricity demand will continue to increase. Unfortunately, traditional large fossil power technologies based on coal, oil and natural gas lead to a major concern in tackling worldwide carbon dioxide emissions, and nuclear power remains unpopular due to public safety concerns. Distributed power generation utilizing CO₂-neutral sources, such as gasification of biomass and municipal solid wastes (MSW), can play an important role in meeting the world energy demand in a sustainable way. This review focuses on the recent technology developments on seven power generation technologies (i.e. internal combustion engine, gas turbine, micro gas turbine, steam turbine, Stirling engine, organic rankine cycle generator, and fuel cell) suitable for distributed power applications with capability of independent operation using syngas derived from gasification of biomass and MSW. Technology selection guidelines is discussed based on criteria, including hardware modification required, size inflexibility, sensitivity to syngas contaminants, operational uncertainty, efficiency, lifetime, fast ramp up/down capability, controls and capital cost. Major challenges facing further development and commercialization of these power generation technologies are discussed.

全球范围内的电力供应已经增加，从2000-2012年的每年新增6000万用户增加到2012-2016年的每年1亿。尽管有这种增长，到2030年仍将有约6.75亿人无法使用电力，这表明电力需求将继续增加。不幸的是，基于煤炭，石油和天然气的传统大型化石发电技术导致了应对全球二氧化碳排放的主要问题，由于公共安全问题，核电仍然不受欢迎。利用CO _2的分布式发电-中性来源，例如生物质气化和城市固体废物（MSW），在以可持续方式满足世界能源需求方面可以发挥重要作用。本文将重点介绍适用于分布式发电应用的七种发电技术（即内燃机，燃气轮机，微型燃气轮机，蒸汽轮机，斯特林发动机，有机朗肯循环发电机和燃料电池）的最新技术发展，这些技术具有独立的能力使用源自生物质和城市固体废弃物气化的合成气进行操作。基于标准讨论技术选择指南，包括所需的硬件修改，尺寸不灵活，对合成气污染物的敏感性，操作不确定性，效率，寿命，快速上/下坡能力，控制和资本成本。