Determination of filter-cake thicknesses from on-line flow measurements and gas/particle transport modeling

摘要

The use of cylindrical candle filters to remove fine ((approx)0.005 mm) particles from hot ((approx)500- 900(degrees)C) gas streams currently is being developed for applications in advanced pressurized fluidized bed combustion (PFBC) and integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technologies. Successfully deployed with hot-gas filtration, PFBC and IGCC technologies will allow the conversion of coal to electrical energy by direct passage of the filtered gases into non-ruggedized turbines and thus provide substantially greater conversion efficiencies with reduced environmental impacts. In the usual approach, one or more clusters of candle filters are suspended from a tubesheet in a pressurized (P (approx lt)1 MPa) vessel into which hot gases and suspended particles enter, the gases pass through the walls of the cylindrical filters, and the filtered particles form a cake on the outside of each filter. The cake is then removed periodically by a backpulse of compressed air from inside the filter, which passes through the filter wall and filter cake. In various development or demonstration systems the thickness of the filter cake has proved to be an important, but unknown, process parameter. This paper describes a physical model for cake and pressure buildups between cleaning backpulses, and for longer term buildups of the ''baseline'' pressure drop, as caused by incomplete filter cleaning and/or re-entrainment. When combined with operating data and laboratory measurements of the cake porosity, the model may be used to calculate the (average) filter permeability, the filter-cake thickness and permeability, and the fraction of filter-cake left on the filter by the cleaning backpulse or re-entrained after the backpulse. When used for a variety of operating conditions (e.g., different coals, sorbents, temperatures, etc.), the model eventually may provide useful information on how the filter-cake properties depend on the various operating parameters.