Hydrogasifier Development Commercial Design of Single-Stage Commercial Scale and Process Development Scale Hydrogasifiers

摘要

An evaluation of the process requirements resulting from changing the Hydrane process from a two-stage hydrogenation to a single-stage hydrogasification process was undertaken by the Dravo Corporation for the Morgantown Energy Research Center, US Department of Energy, Morgantown, and West Virginia. Hydrogenation is the reaction of coal with hydrogen to produce gaseous and/or liquid products. Hydrogasifiation is the gasification of coal by direct reaction with hydrogen to produce gaseous products only. The present single-stage process scheme has further developed hydrogasification to incorporate rapid heating of fine coal particles (70%, -200 mesh) to the reaction temperature (1600 to 2000 exp 0 F). The heating rate has been estimated to be in excess of 1 x 10 exp 60 K per second. The combination of the two foregoing operations, i.e., rapid heating of the particle in an atmosphere of hydrogen, results in devolatilization of the coal particles and rapid reaction of devolatilized hydrocarbons with hydrogen. This process has also been termed flash hydropyrolysis. The advantages which accrue to this process are described. A conceptual plant design study wherein the economics of the Rocketdyne hydrogasification process can be evaluated is needed. Should the economics of the system prove to be competitive with other processes, then an integrated PDU should be designed and built for further experimentation. The process chemistry having been proven, it remains to accentuate process design and hardware development. (ERA citation 05:021606)