Thermodynamic Analysis of Air-Blown Staged Gasification of Coal in a Flow

Abstract

One of the ways to environmentally friendly use coal is an integrated gasification combined cycle. The most common oxidizing agent employed in gasification is oxygen. It is feasible to use air instead of oxygen to reduce the cost of generated electricity. The air gasification downsides can be reduced by using heated air and organizing a staged process. The paper is concerned with a thermodynamic analysis of the MHPS (Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems) air-blown staged gasifier. The analysis relies on an original approach that suggests investigating experimental data on a set of calculated ones. The experimental run nears the thermodynamic optimum, which coincides with the carbon boundary line. Cold gas efficiency can be increased from 78.6 to 81.5% by reducing the equivalence ratio. Thus, the temperature will decrease from 1 200 to 1 100 °C. The experimental run of the MHPS gasifier is not optimal thermodynamically, but it is probably optimal kinetically. The fact is that the rates of heterophase reactions decline near the carbon boundary, which leads to a sharp increase in fuel underburning and a decrease in efficiency. The experimental run is also located close to the region with the maximum thermal efficiency of the process, which is indicative of the high efficiency of converting air heat into chemical energy of producer gas.