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School of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering, University of the Witwatersrand, Private Bag 3,Wits, 2050, South Africa
1. Introduction
1.1. Background of coal gasification
Gasification is a thermochemical process that converts carbonaceous materials,
such as biomass and fossil fuels; into mixture containing mostly hydrogen and
carbon monoxide (synthesis gas) in the presence of oxygen, steam and carbon
dioxide. Coal gasification has been in existence for over 200 years. London saw the
first use of coal gas for gas lights in the late 1700s, and coal gas was later used for
fuel in Europe and North America in the 19 th and early 20th century. During the
second World-War Germany used coal derived fuels for transportation (Rubin, 2006;
Breault, 2010).
Lower cost natural gas and oil replaced coal gas as a fuel source after the second
World-War except for South Africa and some developing countries. This was until the
first oil crisis in 1973. Using oil as a fuel source was now not economical compared
to coal gasification. A number of coal gasification processes had been developed
ever since. Coal gasification technology was developed to meet liquid and gaseous
fuels demand and to also to develop advanced power generation technologies (Sha,
1995). Depending on gasifier type and the conditions at which it operates gasification
can be employed to produce a fuel suitable for various applications (Shandle et al.,
2002).
1.2 Chemistry of Coal gasification
There are two major steps involved in gasification, i.e. de-volatilization followed by
gasification. De-volatilization is similar to pyrolysis and occurs rapidly at
temperatures above 4000C. During this step the coal structure is changed, solid
char, tars, condensable liquids and light gases are produced. The amount of the devolatilization gas that condenses at room temperature is known as char. The
incondensable de-volatilization gas at room temperature and pressure is composed
mainly CO, CO2, CH4 and H2O. After de-volatilization char is left behind. The char is
gasified at low rates (Sha, 1995; Shandle et al., 2002).
( )
that moving bed gasifiers are developed in such a way that they can withstand different
types of solid fuels.
The factors that affect fuel performance dearly in moving bed gasifiers are size distribution
and particle size, the likelihood for formation of an agglomerated mass due to coal melting
(Shadle, et al., 2002). The drawbacks of moving bed gasifiers are that they are not able to
process caking coals. The reason for such is because the coal has likelihood to
agglomerate and swell upon heating resulting in faulty distribution of both gas and solids
leading to process failure ( Bell, et al., 2010). The fouling of gas pipelines due to tar
production in the heating zone when gas is used as a chemical feedstock. Coals that have
moisture content more than 35% are not suitable feedstock for moving bed as they lose
strength when heated. (Shadle, et al., 2002).
1.3.3 Fluidized bed gasifier
The fluidized bed gasifiers emerged in the 1930s as a different approach to move away
from size limitation and lacking fuel flexibility encountered in the early moving bed gasifier (
Hobbs, et al., 1992). The design of the reactor vessel was such that the steam and air flow
needed for gasification was adequate to fluidize the bed of ash, char and coal (Shadle, et
al., 2002). Fluidization results when bed particles are lifted by the gas flow allowing the
gas-solid system to behave as fluid. It should however be noted that the coal feed to this
gasifiers is finer uniformly crushed unlike the larger coal particles used in moving bed
gasifier (Shadle, et al., 2002).
The advantages for these types of gasifiers are that mixing is better and provide uniform
temperatures that promote de-volatilization products to react with oxygen ( Bell, et al.,
2010). In dry fluidized beds the temperature has to be kept under the ash melting poi nt,
this results to incomplete conversion of carbon for non-reactive coals. However the main
advantage of the fluid bed gasifiers is the use of low quality coal containing high ash
content as well as caking coals. The one disadvantage is the high temperature of the fuel
gas exiting the reactor which results from good mixing in the fluid bed gasifiers. Thus this
causes process inefficiency when gas clean-up is utilized. Solids particles trapped within
the product fuel are carbon rich showing coal that did not react, which must be recovered.
(Shadle, et al., 2002).
1.3.4 Entrained flow gasifier
The entrained flow gasifiers history of development is similar to fluidized beds since it was
evolved to increase the fuel gas production rate and allow its operation to be with a wide
feedstock range ( Bell, et al., 2010). In the entrained flow gasifier crushed coal is entrained
with gas medium co-currently under high temperature flame (Miller, 2005). This gasifier
typically has low residence time, utilizes its oxidant as oxygen and has high operational
temperatures which are above ash-slag conditions, resulting in high conversion of carbon
to hydrogen, carbon monoxide and with no tars, oils, or phenols ( Bell, et al., 2010).
This makes this type of gasifier to have a large throughput and capacity compared to other
gasifiers. The characteristics of entrained flow gasifier are that it has the ability to gasify
all types of coal, but generally coals with low ash are highly preferred (Miller, 2005).
3
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