18.
COAL GASIFICATION AND COMBUSTION TECHNOLOGIES
Coal
gasification offers a versatile and clean way to convert the energy content of
coal into electricity, hydrogen, other high quality transportation fuels, as
well as high-value chemicals to meet specific market needs. Most
importantly, in a time of electricity and fuel price spikes, flexible
gasification systems can provide a capability to operate on low-cost,
widely-available feedstocks. Furthermore, gasification may be one of the
best ways to produce clean liquid fuels from coal, and clean-burning hydrogen
for tomorrow's automobiles and power-generating fuel cells.
Hydrogen and other coal-derived gases also can be used to fuel
power-generating turbines or used as chemical "building blocks" for a
wide range of commercial products. The DOE Office of Fossil Energy is
working on coal gasifier technology advances that enhance efficiency,
environmental performance, and reliability.
In
addition, new materials, ideas, and concepts are required to significantly
improve performance and reduce the costs of existing fossil systems or to enable
the development of new systems and capabilities.
The Fossil Energy Materials Program conducts research and development on
high-performance materials for longer-term fossil energy applications, including
gas separations and storage. The
program is concerned with operation in the hostile conditions created when
fossil fuels are converted to energy. These
conditions include high temperatures, elevated pressures, and corrosive
environments (reducing conditions, gaseous alkali). Grant applications are
sought only for the following subtopics:
a.
High Temperature Heat Recovery Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC)—The
National Energy Technology Laboratory’s Clean Coal Technology program includes
two IGCC projects, one at the Polk Power Station operated by Tampa Electric
Company (TEC) and one at the Wabash River Coal Gasification Repowering Project
operated by Wabash River Energy Ltd. Both
facilities experienced similar operational problems associated with their
high-temperature heat recovery units (HTHRU).
Both IGCC facilities experienced significant down time as a result of
erosion, corrosion, fouling and pluggage of the HTHRU.
At
the Wabash IGCC facility, hot syngas from the gasifier flows to the HTHRU to
produce high-pressure steam. The
HTHRU is a vertical firetube steam generator that is used as a syngas cooler.
It has hot syngas on the tube side. The
syngas is cooled from 1,900°F to about 700°F in the HTHRU generating 1,600
psia steam. Steam from the HTHRU is
superheated by the gas turbine heat recovery system for power generation.
Major components of the
At
the Polk Power Station hot syngas leaves the gasifier and passes through a
radiant syngas cooler (RSC). The RSC
had a design exit temperature of about 1350°F, but
due to the fact that it was oversized, the actual exit temperature is around
1050°F. The syngas then enters the
convective syngas cooler (
Grant
applications are sought for: novel
ideas and approaches that can significantly reduce or even eliminate these
problems without adversely affecting the thermal performance of the system.
Questions
– contact Ronald Breault (ronald.breault@netl.doe.gov)
b.
Novel Concepts in Industrial Gasification—Natural
gas is used as a feedstock in many industries in addition to the power
production industry. However, the
increasing cost of natural gas, along with the likelihood that the cost will
continue to increase, is driving the development of new technologies to improve
the economic return for coal gasification processes outside that of power
production. Therefore, grant
applications are sought to develop novel technologies to make gasification, from
a feedstock of at least 75% coal, more attractive for industrial use, including
the production of synthesis gas, hydrogen or substitute natural gas (SNG).
New or revisited gasification concepts, e.g., hydro-, or catalytic
gasification are encouraged. Target industries include small utility, metals,
chemicals, pulp and paper, and glass. Proposed
approaches should demonstrate a significant impact on the chosen industry or
industries – the larger the niche for the gasification process, the better. The
proposed novel technology and overall process may be for either near term or
long term deployment into industry. DOE
envisions that the industrial applications scale would be in the 25 to 100 MWe
equivalent range.
Grant
applications are sought to:
address optimizing the gasifier operating conditions for a specific
industrial application. For example,
for hydrogen/SNG production, the operating conditions and design characteristics
that might reasonably be expected to influence the methane and/or hydrogen
content include: pressure;
temperature; feed media and system (dry vs. wet slurry with water); residence
time and internal or external recirculation/recycle rates; sizing of reaction
chamber; feed rates of oxidant or steam; particle sizing; feed injector mixing
patterns; number and design of gasification stages; internal/external shift
reaction catalysts; and internal separation mechanisms, such as sorbents and/or
membranes. Process operating
conditions that can offer potential advantages in efficiency and cost are
preferred, and an assessment of these factors should be included as part of the
data evaluation component of the research project. Limited modeling to support
experimental work is acceptable, but grant applications that involve extended,
idealistic modeling of gasification systems, without supporting experimental
data, are not of interest.
Grant
applications must also:
(1) define the products of the gasification process and show whether they
will be exported, used within the plant, or a combination of each – it is not
necessary for power to be one of the products, although it may be; and (2)
include in Phase I an analysis of plant thermal efficiency and economics, in
comparison to competing technologies.
Questions
– contact Elaine Everitt (Elaine.everitt@netl.doe.gov)
c.
Novel Concepts In Hydrogen Production And Process Intensification—The
DOE’s FutureGen project, now in its early planning stage, aims to demonstrate
the technical/economical feasibility of a coal gasification plant to produce
power, with near-zero emissions including the emission of carbon dioxide.
The strategy is to convert coal to hydrogen that would be used as fuel
for fuel cells and/or gas turbines, with the concurrent sequestering of the
concentrated carbon dioxide from the processing and power blocks.
Under this scheme, coal first would be gasified to produce synthesis gas
(mainly hydrogen and carbon monoxide). This
would be followed by processes for removing impurities and producing additional
hydrogen through the water-gas-shift reaction.
Finally, the hydrogen would be separated from other compounds.
Hydrogen has the potential to be
used in a number of end-use applications each having its own purity standards.
New materials and processes are necessary to remove trace quantities of
impurities such as CO, N2,
S, metals, and other impurities to manufacture high purity hydrogen for a
variety of applications. Therefore,
grant applications are sought to develop advanced processes, materials and
devices for producing ultra-pure hydrogen from coal-derived synthesis gas.
While, the primary interest is processes that remove all impurities,
Grant
applications should demonstrate: familiarity
with end-use purity specifications and ensure that the level of hydrogen purity
provided by the proposed concept matches the appropriate end-use (i.e., hydrogen
turbines, fuel cell, modified internal combustion engines).
Process
Intensification through the development of advanced technologies that offer the
potential to consolidate two or more unit processes/unit operations in one
module could provide higher efficiencies, lower capital costs and a smaller
overall footprint for the coal-to-hydrogen plant.
One such example is the combination of water-gas-shift and hydrogen
separation into a single step, carried out at temperatures compatible with the
synthesis gas that exits from the cleanup step.
(Current development work shows that clean syngas can be produced in the
350oC to 400oC range.)
Grant
applications are sought to: develop
novel processes that may be located inside the gasifier as well as those located
outside the gasifier to produce a syngas with high hydrogen content (>70% by
vol.). Proposed approaches should
provide robust performance; high hydrogen throughput, selectivity, and recovery;
long system life; and low operating cost. These
new technologies should be able to operate at pressures compatible with gasifier
pressures up to 1000 psig. In
addition, they should have high tolerance for the low levels of sulfur and the
other impurities that are present in feed gas.
Grant applications should demonstrate familiarity with current commercial
technologies to produce hydrogen from coal, as well as with the ongoing R&D
supported by DOE in the coal-to-hydrogen program.
Questions
- contact Patricia Rawls (patricia.rawls@netl.doe.gov)
d.
Hydrogen and Syngas, Novel Concepts in Liquid Fuels Production and Process
Intensification with Carbon Management—The
United States’ economy is inextricably linked
to liquid fuels to sustain its large transportation sector.
These liquid fuels are largely derived from crude oil, but world crude
oil prices have skyrocketed from around $10 per barrel to over $60 per barrel
within the past seven years. Consequently,
an immediate and viable alternative to crude oil is needed to moderate the
effect of price hikes and provide an interim bridge until some other fuel source
can commercially supplant petroleum-based fuels.
The few candidate resources to produce liquid fuels include biomass, oil
sands, oil shale, and coal, but coal is the most promising resource with over
250 billion tons of known reserves.
Coal-derived
liquid fuels produced via Fischer-Tropsch (FT) processes are fungible with the
existing petroleum distribution, storage, and end-use infrastructure.
Furthermore, these fuels are zero-sulfur paraffinic hydrocarbons that are
similar to diesel with a high cetane number (~75) compared to petroleum diesel
(~45). This provides for efficient
operation in high-pressure compression-ignition engines and reduced particulate
emissions. Coal-derived liquid fuels
can also be used as hydrogen carriers, which when reformed can produce hydrogen
for transportation, fuel cells, and other forms of distributed hydrogen
generation.
Although
the FT process is commercial in South Africa
and Malaysia, several challenges face the production of liquid
fuels from coal. The coal-derived
synthesis gas contains trace contaminants that poison the catalysts used in the
synthesis of liquid fuels. Some
catalysts are sensitive to even ppb levels of these contaminants.
In addition, the ratio of hydrogen-to-carbon monoxide in the feed may
need to be adjusted prior to liquid fuels synthesis.
Catalyst separation from the waxes that result from FT synthesis also
presents a challenge.
Other
challenges facing the conversion of coal to liquid fuels are efficiency,
footprint, and lower capital costs. These
challenges may be overcome through process intensification, consolidating two or
more unit operations into a single integrated module that in some cases produces
a synergy between certain unit operations that increase efficiency and lowers
capital costs.
Furthermore,
in today’s environment, a third technology is needed in the production of
liquid fuels from coal, namely carbon dioxide capture.
Large quantities of carbon dioxide are released when coal is converted to
another energy form. Carbon dioxide
emissions prompt concerns over global climate change; therefore it is imperative
that any new process should be able to operate on a carbon dioxide constrained
environment.
Grant
applications must: describe
a novel, highly selective process for producing liquid fuels from coal.
Concepts which utilize biomass or any feedstock other than coal or
petroleum coke/resid are not sought. For
processes based on the gasification of coal and the subsequent conversion of
synthesis gas to liquid fuels, research work on the coal gasification system is
not desired, however, the commercial gasifier, gas cleanup, and other components
necessary to provide the required synthesis gas for conversion to liquid fuel
must be identified. Grant
applications should demonstrate familiarity with current commercial technologies
for producing liquid fuels from coal as well as with ongoing R&D in this
area.
Grant
applications should: include
a concept providing for the integration of two or more unit operations to
demonstrate process intensification. The
objective of process intensification is to achieve higher efficiencies, lower
capital costs, and a smaller overall footprint over what can be achieved by
utilizing separate components for each required unit operation.
This may include novel processes that may be located inside the gasifier
as well as those located outside the gasifier.
In addition, grant applications should also provide for a
sequestration-ready carbon dioxide stream.
It
is expected that experimental work will be conducted at laboratory and/or
bench-scale to demonstrate the technical feasibility of the novel concepts
proposed. In support of the
experimental work proposed, a preliminary analysis (with a block flow diagram
and energy and mass balances) should be provided to aid in assessing the
commercial potential of the concept. All
emissions and environmental concerns, including the capture of any carbon
dioxide must be addressed. The
analysis must also address a conceptual strategy for achieving liquid fuel
purity sufficient for existing transport applications with minimal refining.
Any byproduct species must be identified, including estimated amounts and
mode of disposition.
Questions-
contact Robert Kornosky (robert.kornosky@netl.doe.gov)
References:
Subtopic
a: High
Temperature Heat Recovery Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC)
1.
“
2.
“Wabash
River
Coal Gasification Repowering Project: A DOE
Assessment,” January, 2002. (Full
text available at: http://www.fischer-tropsch.org/DOE/DOE_reports/Wabash%20River%20Repowering/2002/2002-1164/2002-1164%20-%20DOE%20ASSMNT.pdf)
3.
McDaniel, J. E. and Hornick, M., “Polk
Power Station IGCC: 6th Year of
Commercial Operation,” presented at the 2002 Gasification Technologies
Conference, San Francisco, October 2002. (Full
text available at http://www.gasification.org/Docs/2002_Papers/GTC02011.pdf)
4.
eia:
Energy Information Administration U.S. DOE Website.
(URL: http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/dnav/pet/hist/wtotworldw.htm
)
Subtopic
b: Novel Concepts in Industrial
Gasification
5.
“Gasification – Advanced Gas Separation: O2 Separation,”
U.S.
DOE National Energy Technology Laboratory Website.
(URL: http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/gasification/gas-sep/o2-sep.html)
6.
Air Products, “ITM Oxygen:
The New Oxygen Supply for the New IGCC Market,” 2005 Gasification
Technology Council presentation. (URL:
http://www.gasification.org/Docs/2005_Papers/43ARMS.pdf)
Subtopic
c: Novel Concepts In Hydrogen
Production And Process Intensification
7.
Lin, Y. S., “Microporous and Dense
Inorganic Membranes: Current Status
and Prospective,” Separation and Purification Technology, 25:39–55,
2001. (Abstract and ordering
information available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/.
On menu at left, Browse by [journal] title for volume and page number.)
8.
“FutureGen – Tomorrow’s
Pollution-Free Power Plant,” U.S. DOE Office of Fossil Energy Website. (URL:
http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/futuregen/index.html)
9.
“Hydrogen and Clean Fuels Research,”
U.S.DOE Office of Fossil Energy Website. (URL:
http://www.fe.doe.gov/programs/fuels/index.html)
10.
Tong, J., et al., “Thin Defect-Free Pd
Membrane Deposited on Asymmetric Porous Stainless Steel Substrates,” Industrial
& Engineering Chemistry Research, 44(21): 8025 -8032, October 2005.
(ISSN: 08885885) (Abstract and ordering information available at: http://sciserver.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/sciserv.pl?collection=journals&journal=08885885&issue=v44i0021.
Scroll down to title and click on “Abstract”.
To purchase, click on link in upper right corner.)
11.
Kamakoti, P., et al., “Prediction
of H2 Flux
thru Sulfur-Tolerant Dense Binary Alloy Membranes,” Science
Magazine, Vol. 307,
12.
Balachandran, U., “Hydrogen
Permeation and Chemical Stability of Cermet Membranes,” Electrochemical
and Solid State Letters, 8(12), J35-J37, 2005. (ISSN:
1099-0062) (Abstract at: http://ecsdl.org/.
Click on journal title and browse for volume and issue.)
13.
Roark, S. E., et al., “Dense
Layered Membranes for Hydrogen Separation,” U.S.
Patent No. 7,001,446 B2,
14.
Doong, S., et al., “A
Novel Membrane Reactor for Direct Hydrogen Production from Coal,” DOE
Technical Report, January 2006. (OSTI
ID: 876470) (Full text available at:
(http://www.osti.gov/bridge/product.biblio.jsp?query_id=0&page=0&osti_id=876470)
Subtopic
d: Hydrogen and Syngas, Novel
Concepts in Liquid Fuels Production and Process Intensification with Carbon
Management
15.
“Gasification: Advanced Gasification,”
U.S.
DOE National Energy Technology Laboratory Website.
(URL: http://www.netl.doe.gov/technologies/coalpower/gasification/adv-gas/index.html)
16.
“Hydrogen and Other Clean Fuels,” U.S.
Department of Energy Office of Fossil Energy Website.
(URL: http://fossil.energy.gov/programs/fuels/)
17.
Breckenridge, W., et al., “Use of
SELEXOL Process in Coke Gasification to Ammonia Project,” paper presented at
the Laurance Reid Gas Conditioning
Conference, Norman, OK, Feb. 27 – Mar. 1, 2000. (http://www.uop.com/objects/92SelexCokeGasifAmm.pdf)
18.
Hydrogen-from-Coal Program: Research,
Development, and Demonstration Plan (for the period 2004 through 2015),
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