Bioresource Technology 205 (2016) 133141

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Bioresource Technology
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biortech

Thermodynamic analyses of a biomasscoal co-gasification power

generation system
Linbo Yan a, Guangxi Yue a, Boshu He b,c,
a
Department of Thermal Engineering, Key Laboratory for Thermal Science and Power Engineering of Ministry of Education, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China
b
Institute of Combustion and Thermal Systems, School of Mechanical, Electronic and Control Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
c
Beijing Key Laboratory of Powertrain for New Energy Vehicle, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China

h i g h l i g h t s

A biomasscoal co-gasification based power generation system is setup with Aspen Plus.

Energy and exergy balance calculations are done for this system.

Sensitivity analysis is done to understand the system operation characteristics.

Total energy and exergy efficiencies of this system can be 39.9% and 37.6%, respectively.

About 96.0% of the carbon contained in coal and biomass can be captured in this system.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: A novel chemical looping power generation system is presented based on the biomasscoal co-
Received 14 November 2015 gasification with steam. The effects of different key operation parameters including biomass mass frac-
Received in revised form 8 January 2016 tion (Rb), steam to carbon mole ratio (Rsc), gasification temperature (Tg) and iron to fuel mole ratio (Rif)
Accepted 9 January 2016
on the system performances like energy efficiency (ge), total energy efficiency (gte), exergy efficiency
Available online 23 January 2016
(gex), total exergy efficiency (gtex) and carbon capture rate (gcc) are analyzed. A benchmark condition
is set, under which gte, gtex and gcc are found to be 39.9%, 37.6% and 96.0%, respectively. Furthermore,
Keywords:
detailed energy Sankey diagram and exergy Grassmann diagram are drawn for the entire system operat-
Co-gasification
Chemical looping
ing under the benchmark condition. The energy and exergy efficiencies of the units composing the system
Solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) are also predicted.
Coal 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Biomass

1. Introduction
Coal is the most important but dirtiest fossil fuel on earth. It is
not renewable and can be exhausted one day in the future (U.S.
Energy Information Administration, 2013; Franco and Diaz,
2009). In comparison, biomass is renewable, clean and carbon neu-
tral. Unfortunately, biomass cannot completely take the place of
coal for power generation because it is season-dependent and
low in calorific density (Thomas et al., 2012). Co-gasification of bio-
mass and coal can be a good solution. With this concept, coal
resource can be saved and the biomass resource can be sufficiently
explored (Zhang et al., 2016). In the meantime, net carbon dis-
charge for power generation can be readily controlled. In addition,
Corresponding author at: Institute of Combustion and Thermal Systems, School
of Mechanical, Electronic and Control Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University,
Beijing 100044, China. Tel.: +86 10 5168 8542; fax: +86 10 5168 8404.
E-mail address: hebs@bjtu.edu.cn (B. He).
it was reported that synergistic effect could be detected during the
co-gasification of some coal and biomass (Pinto et al., 2014). What
is more, gasification itself is more effective than the strongly irre-
versible combustion process (Yan et al., 2013).
Recently, with the advent of fear about climate change, atten-
tions have been focused on the carbon capture and sequestration
(CCS) during the thermal conversion of coal. Gasification for hydro-
gen generation represents the CO2 pre-combustion capture tech-
nology (Babu et al., 2013). This technology is strongly restricted
by the gasification equilibrium state. Oxy-fuel combustion repre-
sents the in situ capturing technology (Tran et al., 2016). This
technology, however, needs the air separation unit which is
power-intensive. The post-combustion capturing technologies, like
the pressure swing absorption (PSA) (Gasas et al., 2013) and the
monoethanolamine (MEA) CO2 absorption (Reynolds et al., 2015),
all have their inherent deficiencies. Recently, the chemical looping
process (CLP) has been proposed as one novel method for CO2 sep-
aration. The chemical looping combustion (CLC) and the chemical

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.biortech.2016.01.049
0960-8524/ 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
134 L. Yan et al. / Bioresource Technology 205 (2016) 133141

Nomenclature

Pturb electric power generated by the steam turbine [kW]

Parameters Rb biomass mass fraction
Aad ash content of air-dried basis Rif iron to fuel mole ratio
Ad ash content of dry basis Rsc steam to carbon mole ratio
Car carbon content of as received basis s specific entropies [kJ/(kg K)]
Cdaf carbon content of dry-ash-free basis s0 reference specific entropies [kJ/(kg K)]
Cexhaust the amount of carbon released [kg/h] Sar sulphur content of as received basis
Cinput the total amount of carbon brought by feed stock [kg/h] Sdaf carbon content of dry-ash-free basis
Clar chlorine content of as received basis T0 environment temperature [C]
Cp,gas specific heat [kJ/(kg K)] Tg gasification temperature [C]
en specific molar energy [kJ/kg] Tgas actual gas temperature [C]
ex total specific exergy [kJ/kg] Vad volatile content of air-dried basis
exch chemical exergy [kJ/kg] Vd volatile content of dry basis
exch standard chemical exergy of species i w the mass fraction of moisture
i
exph physical exergy [kJ/kg] Wu output work of a unit
P Yi mass fraction of element i in coal
Ei electric power consumed by the pumps and compres-
sors [kW]
Enin energy of the inlet streams [kJ/kg] Greek symbols
Enl energy loss [kJ/kg] gcc carbon capture rate
Enout energy of the outlet streams [kJ/kg] ge energy efficiency
Exin exergy of the inlet streams [kJ/kg] gex exergy efficiency
Exl exergy loss [kJ/kg] gte total energy efficiency
Exout exergy of the outlet streams [kJ/kg] gtex total exergy efficiency
FCad fixed carbon content of air-dried basis udry coefficient correlated with the solid fuel composition
FCd fixed carbon content of dry basis vi molar fraction of species i
h specific enthalpy [kJ/kg]
Har hydrogen content of as received basis Abbreviations
Hdaf carbon content of dry-ash-free basis ASU air separation unit
LHVgas lower heating value of gas [kJ/kg] CB-CLP coal and biomass based chemical looping power gener-
LHVsolid lower heating value of a solid fuel [kJ/kg] ation
mbio mass flows of biomass [kg/h] CCS carbon capture and sequestration
mcoal mass flows of coal [kg/h] CLC chemical looping combustion
Mad moisture content of air-dried basis CLH chemical looping hydrogen
Mar moisture content of as received basis CLOU chemical looping with oxygen uncoupling
Mi mole flow rate of species i [kmol/h] CLP chemical looping process
Nar nitrogen content of as received basis CLR chemical looping reforming
Ndaf carbon content of dry-ash-free basis EnBC energy balance calculation
Oar oxygen content of as received basis ExBC exergy balance calculation
Odaf carbon content of dry-ash-free basis GT gas turbine
p0 environment temperature [Pa] MEA monoethanolamine
PSOFC output electric power from SOFC [120 kW] SOFC solid oxide fuel cell

looping with oxygen uncoupling (CLOU) technologies can be good
substitutions for the oxy-fuel combustion since the CLC and CLOU
are less power-intensive to generate pure oxygen (Huang et al.,
2013; Alexander et al., 2011). The chemical looping hydrogen
(CLH) generation and the chemical looping reforming (CLR) (Tao
et al., 2015) are also prospective means to get hydrogen with
CO2 capture. CLH can generate pure hydrogen and its CO2 capture
ability is brilliant with proper oxygen carriers. Research has found
that most Fe-based oxygen carriers demonstrate higher melting
point, better mechanical strength, lower environmental impact
and lower cost than the others (Huang et al., 2013). Thus, CLH with
Fe-based oxygen carrier is chosen to capture CO2 in this work.
Since the steam gasification process is endothermic, the heat
needed can be supplied by the CLOU process with the Cu-based
oxygen carrier. In combination with CLH and CLOU, the mineral
sequestration which is not power-intensive (Li et al., 2011) is cho-
sen and CO2 can be permanently stored by forsterite (2MgOSiO2)
or serpentine (3MgOSiO22H2O) which are naturally common.
In terms of power generation, fuel cell is very promising
(Doherty et al., 2010) and the solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) is chosen
to convert the chemical energy of hydrogen into power in this work,
and the steam turbine is chosen as the heat recovery unit. With the
other aforementioned technologies, a coal and biomass based
chemical looping power generation (CB-CLP) system is developed.
The schematic diagram of the CB-CLP system is shown in Fig. 1.
Biomass and coal are co-gasified with steam in the gasifier and
the generated syngas enters the reducer to reduce Fe2O3. FeO gen-
erated in the reducer then enters the oxidizer to split water. Fe3O4
generated in the oxidizer then enters the combustor to regenerate
Fe2O3. H2 generated in the oxidizer then enters the SOFC to generate
electric power. Sensible heat generated in the system is recycled
and generates power with the steam turbine. CO2 rich depleted syn-
gas from the reducer then enters the sequestration unit.
Besides the CB-CLP system developed in this work, many other
similar systems have also been put forward by researchers. Chen
once developed a power generation system which integrates the
coal gasification, the SOFC and the CLC technologies (Chen et al.,
2015). The system is very novel and promising. It used O2 and
CO2 as the gasification agent and O2 was obtained by an air sepa-
ration unit (ASU). Torsten (Methling et al., 2014) recently devel-
oped a clean power generation system which combined the
biomass fermentation and gasification. The SOFC and the gas
 L. Yan et al. / Bioresource Technology 205 (2016) 133141
Power
Recycled
Air SOFC
H2O,N2
Oxidizer
H 2O
FeO
Reducer
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the CB-CLP system.
turbine (GT) were used as the power generation unit in their
system. The whole system is also novel and promising. Since the
system used CO2-oxy coal gasification as the syngas generator,
ASU was required. Torsten (Cormos, 2015) recently developed a
biomass direct chemical looping for hydrogen and power co-
production system. The system utilized ASU to generate pure
oxygen, CLH to generate hydrogen, and gas turbine to generate
power. CO2 generated in the system was compressed for storage.
From the literature review, it is found that a system which inte-
grates the co-gasification of coal and biomass, the CLH, the SOFC,
the mineral sequestration of CO2, and the heat recovery component
would be very promising. This is because the alkali metals con-
tained in biomass will lead to the synergistic effect during the
co-gasification, as well as some other advantages of the co-
gasification process mentioned above. The syngas generated in
the gasifier usually contains large amount of CO and CH4. CO will
form carbon deposit through the disproportionated reaction and
CH4 will form carbon deposit through the cracking reaction, which
will negatively affect the catalyst in the SOFC anode and the carbon
contained in the syngas cannot be separated either. Three methods
can be employed to solve this issue. The first is using the watergas-
shift reaction and the reforming reaction to convert CO and CH4 into
H2, the second is using the CLR process (Tang et al., 2015) to gener-
ate H2 and the third is using the CLH technology to generate H2. The
first two methods cannot generate pure H2 and need additional
assistant to separate CO2 from the syngas, so the CLH technology
is assembled between the gasifier and the SOFC in this work. The
CB-CLP system developed in this work is actually only one specific
application of the conceptual integrated system which contains a
gasifier, a CLH unit, an SOFC and a heat recovery unit. Each of these
units in the system can be changed to other parallel forms without
greatly affecting the system efficiency if the efficiencies of the par-
allel units are close to those of the originals.
2. Methods
2.1. Development method of the CB-CLP system
Datong coal and wheat straw are chosen as the feed stock and
steam serves as the gasification agent. For the proximate analysis
135
Steam
Heat
Power
Turbine
Recycled
Heat
Fe3O4 Combustor
Pure
N2
Fe2O3 Sequestration
CO2 Rich
Flue Gas
Gasifier
of Datong coal at the air-dried basis, the contents of moisture
(Mad), volatile (Vad), fixed carbon (FCad) and ash (Aad) are 3.27%,
25.73%, 57.26% and 13.74%, respectively. The high heating value
(HHV) of Datong coal is 26598.3 kJ/kg. For the ultimate analysis
of Datong coal at the dry-ash-free basis, the contents of carbon
(Cdaf), hydrogen (Hdaf), oxygen (Odaf), nitrogen (Ndaf) and sulphur
(Sdaf) are 82.76%, 5.07%, 8.93%, 0.82% and 2.42%, respectively
(Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2010). For the proximate analysis
of wheat straw at the dry basis, the contents of volatile (Vd), fixed
carbon (FCd) and ash (Ad) are 71.6%, 15.7% and 12.7%, respectively.
Moisture content (Mar) at the as-received basis of wheat straw is
5.18% and the high heating value is 16749.5 kJ/kg. For the ultimate
analysis of wheat straw at the as-received basis, the contents of
carbon (Car), hydrogen (Har), oxygen (Oar), nitrogen (Nar), sulphur
(Sar) and chlorine (Clar) are 48.3%, 5.3%, 28.8%, 0.3%, 0.09% and
0.64%, respectively (Carpenter et al., 2010). In the gasifier, coal
and biomass are firstly dried and decomposed into gaseous species,
solid carbon and ash, following which the gaseous species and
solid carbon react with steam to generate syngas. Since the Gibbs
reactor is used, the intermediate products will not affect the final
gasification result. The main reaction in the gasifier is the water
gas generation reaction, which is endothermic and the heat energy
is supplied by the CLOU process. Reactors with internal heat
exchangers are suggested to serve as the gasifier for the gasifica-
tion process (Lee, 1996).
The CLH process of the system contains a reducer, an oxidizer
and a combustor. In the reducer, Fe2O3 is reduced by the syngas
from the gasifier to generate FeO. In the oxidizer, FeO reacts with
steam to generate H2. Fe3O4 generated in the oxidizer then enters
the combustor to regenerate Fe2O3. The CO2 rich exhausted syngas
generated in the reducer then enters the sequestration unit and
reacts with forsterite (2MgOSiO2) or serpentine (3MgOSiO22H2O)
which is naturally common as shown by reactions R1 and R2.
1 1
2MgO  SiO2 CO2 MgCO3 SiO2 R1
2 2
1 1 2
3MgO  SiO2  2H2 O CO2 MgCO3 SiO2 H2 O R2
3 3 3
The sequestration process can release large amount of low qual-
ity heat energy which can be used to heat the system inlet water to
136 L. Yan et al. / Bioresource Technology 205 (2016) 133141
the overheating state under the atmosphere pressure. The heat
energy contained in the high temperature depleted air from the
combustor can be recycled by the heat recovery unit.
Pure H2 can be obtained by condensing the steam in the oxi-
dizer outlet and then it enters the SOFC where the electrochemical
reactions take place as shown by reactions R3 and R4. The Nernst
equation, along with the voltage loss correlations, is used to calcu-
late the practical voltage of the SOFC stack (Doherty et al., 2010).
H2 2H 2e R3
0:5O2 2H 2e H2 O R4
Note that in the Aspen Plus, the reaction of H2 and O2 is not
treated as the electrochemical style, but the normal combustion
reaction. The electric power of SOFC is calculated with the corre-
sponding mathematical models which have been validated in our
former work (Yan et al., 2012). Thus, the electric power should
be subtracted from the outlet heat stream of SOFC so as to obtain
the right value. The inlet air of SOFC is divided into pure O2, and
N2 rich air in the cathode. Part of the pure H2 is consumed in the
anode with a specific fuel utilization factor. The left H2 then enters
the post combustor and reacts with the N2 rich air. The high tem-
perature flue gas from SOFC is mainly used to heat up the inlet air
to the required temperature.
The heater, the combustor and the SOFC of the system can all
generate high temperature waste heat. Hence, the heat recovery
unit is required to improve the system efficiency. The extracting
and condensing steam turbine is chosen and a corresponding sim-
plified model is setup with Aspen Plus. The model consists of a boi-
ler, a high pressure cylinder, an intermediate pressure cylinder, a
low pressure cylinder, a condenser, a low pressure heater, a deaer-
ator and a high pressure heater. The extraction rate of each extrac-
tion stage for the steam turbine is calculated based on the thremal
balance (Chaibakhsh and Ghaffari, 2008).
During the simulation, the gasifier temperature varies from
600 C to 850 C and the gasification pressure is 1 atm. The temper-
ature and pressure of the turbine inlet steam are 540 C and
185.9 bar, respectively. The temperatures of the reducer, the oxi-
dizer, the SOFC and the CO2 sequestration unit are 860 C, 400 C,
1000 C and 200 C, respectively. The pressures of the reducer,
the oxidizer, the SOFC and the CO2 sequestration unit are all
1 atm. The benchmark condition is set as the biomass mass fraction
(Rb) of 0.5, the steam to carbon mole ratio (Rsc) of 1.2, the gasifica-
tion temperature (Tg) of 700 C and the iron to fuel mole ratio (Rif)
of 1. The main operating parameters of the system under the
benchmark condition are marked in Fig. 2.
2.2. Energy and exergy analyses method
Energy is a conserved quantity, namely the sum of all the
energy inputs equals that of the energy outputs. The specific molar
energy of a gas flow can be calculated by Eq. (1).
Z T gas
en LHV gas C p;gas dT 1 T0
T0
where en denotes the specific energy of a gas flow. Cp,gas denotes the
specific heat of gas at constant pressure. Tgas and T0 are the actual
gas temperature and 298.15 K. LHVgas is the lower heating value
of gas which can be calculated either by Eq. (2) (Reynolds et al.,
2015) or by Aspen Plus. Similarly, the lower heating values of coal
and biomass are taken as their values of specific energy.
LHV gas 282 993vCO 802 303vCH4 241 827vH2 2 tion conditions, the EnBC and ExBC for each unit of the entire sys-
where vi denotes the molar fraction of species i.
In order to investigate the energy and exergy flows of the sys-
tem under the benchmark condition, the energy balance calcula-
tion (EnBC) and the exergy balance calculation (ExBC) were done
for each unit of the system, and the Sankey diagram and Grass-
mann diagram were drawn. For the thermodynamic analysis of a
system, the total specific exergy is usually considered to involve
the physical exergy and the chemical exergy as expressed by
Eq. (3).
ex exph exch 3
ph ch
where ex denotes the total specific exergy; ex and ex denote the
specific physical and chemical exergies, respectively. If the kinetic
and potential exergies are igored, the specific physical exergy of a
flow stream can be calculated with Eq. (4).
exph h  h0  T 0 s  s0 4
where h and h0 denote the specific enthalpies of a stream at the
practical state (T, p) and the environment (T0, p0), respectively;
s and s0 denote the specific entropies of a stream at the practical
state and the environment. The specific chemical exergy of a gas
mixture can be calculated with Eq. (5), and that of a solid fossil fuel
can be calculated with Eq. (6) (Bakshi et al., 2011).
X X
mix
exch vi  exch
i RT 0 vi  ln vi 5
where R denotes the gas constant; exchi denotes the standard chem-
ical exergy of species i, which are available in literature (El-Emam
et al., 2012).
fuel LHV solid w  hl udry 9417Y s
exch 6
where LHVsolid denotes the lower heating value of a solid fuel; w
denotes the mass fraction of moisture in the fuel; Ys denotes the
sulphur mass fraction in the fuel; udry is a coefficient correlated
with the solid fuel composition and can be calculated by Eq. (7)
when the oxygen to carbon mass ratio is less than 0.667 (Wang
and Wang, 2006; Perry and Green, 1999).
Yh Yo Yn
udry 0:1882 0:061 0:0404 1:0437 7
Yc Yc Yc
where Yc, Yh, Yo, Yn denotes the mass fractions of C, H, O and N in the
fuel at the dry-ash-free basis.
For an open system operating at steady state, EnBC and ExBC
can be realized by Eqs. (8) and (9) if the kinetic and potential ener-
gies are neglected (Perry and Green, 1999).
En2 Enin  Enout Q  W u 8
Exl Exin  Exout Exq  W u 9
where Enl is the energy loss and Exl is the exergy loss in a unit; Enin
and Enout are the energies of the inlet and outlet streams of a unit;
Exin and Exout are the corresponding exergies of the inlet and outlet
streams; Wu is the output work of a unit; Exq is the exergy of the
inlet heat Q which is calculated by Eq. (10).
 
Exq 1  Q 10
T gas
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Energy and exergy analyses of CB-CLP system
With the above correlations and under the benchmark opera-
tem were done. The detailed energy and exergy flows of the CB-CLP
system are shown in Figs. 3 and 4, respectively.
L. Yan et al. / Bioresource Technology 205 (2016) 133141 137

Fig. 2. Detailed flow sheet of the CB-CLP system.

138 L. Yan et al. / Bioresource Technology 205 (2016) 133141

Fig. 3. Energy Sankey diagram of the CB-CLP system.

Fig. 4. Exergy Grassmann diagram of the CB-CLP system.

From Fig. 3, the concrete values of the inlet and outlet energy
flows of each unit can be seen precisely. The energy efficiencies
of the gasifier, the reducer, the oxidizer, the combustor, the SOFC
and the steam turbine are 90.03%, 100%, 88.54%, 91.45%, 89.62%
and 36.63%, respectively. It can be imagined that if there is no
waste heat discharged into the environment, the energy efficiency
of each unit can be 100%. The energy efficiency of the steam tur-
bine is the lowest, this is mainly caused by the discharge of large
amount of low quality energy into the environment.
From Fig. 4, the concrete values of the inlet and outlet exergy
flows of each unit can be seen precisely. Noted that the exergy loss
here includes both the exergy destruction and the exergy contained
in the flue gases discharged to the environment. The exergy efficien-
cies of the gasifier, the reducer, the oxidizer, the combustor, the SOFC
and the steam turbine are 91.60%, 95.60%, 89.73%, 78.14%, 72.99%
and 65.2%, respectively. The Heater and RFHeater parts of the system
will lose large amount of exergy. This is mainly because strongly
irreversible combustions take place there. To further improve the
 L. Yan et al. / Bioresource Technology 205 (2016) 133141 139

system exergy efficiency, the strong irreversible combustion process MFe

Rif 13
should be reduced or even avoided. For example, the combustor M CO M H2 4  MCH4
unit of the CLH process can be removed and the formats of
where Mi is the mole flow rate of species i.
Fe-based oxygen carrier in the CLH are mainly Fe3O4 and FeO. P
PSOFC  Ei
ge 14
3.2. Sensitivity analyses of the CB-CLP system Encoal Enbio
P
To investigate how the control parameters, including Rb, Rsc, Tg PSOFC  Ei
gex 15
and Rif, affect the system operating results including the energy Excoal Exbio
efficiency (ge), the total energy efficiency (gte), the exergy
where PSOFC is the output electric power from SOFC which is
efficiency (gex), the total exergy efficiency (gtex) and the carbon P
120 kW (Doherty et al., 2010); Ei is the electric power consumed
capture rate (gcc), sensitivity analyses were done and the corre-
by the pumps and compressors in the system; Eni and Exi are the
sponding results are shown in panels (a)(d) of Fig. 5. Rb, Rsc, Rif,
energy and exergy of inlet stream i, respectively.
ge, gte, gex, gtex and gcc are defined by Eqs. (11)(18) P
PSOFC PTURB  Ei
Rb
mbio
11 gte 16
mcoal mbio Encoal Enbio
P
where mcoal and mbio are the mass flows of coal and biomass, PSOFC PTURB  Ei
respectively. gtex 17
Excoal Exbio
M H2 O where PTURB is the electric power generated by the steam turbine.
Rsc 12
M carbon
C exhaust
where MH2 O and Mcarbon denote the mole flows of H2O and carbon in gcc 1  18
C input
the gasifer.

Fig. 5. Effects of different parameters on the system operation results.

140 L. Yan et al. / Bioresource Technology 205 (2016) 133141
where Cexhaust denotes the amount of carbon that cannot be effi-
ciently captured in the system; Cinput denotes the total amount of
carbon contained in the feed coal and biomass.
Fig. 5(a) indicates that the effect of Rb on the system perfor-
mance is very slight. When Rb is lower than 0.3, ge and gex slightly
increase against the Rb increment while the reverse variation
trends for ge and gex can be detected when Rb is higher than 0.3.
This is because the HHV of wheat straw is much lower than that
of Datong coal. To generate equivalent electric power in the SOFC,
with the increase of Rb, the total chemical energy brought by coal
and biomass to the gasifier slightly decreases while the amount
of biomass consumed in the heater to supply heat energy to the
gasifier slightly increases. Thus, there should be a turning point
and it is predicted to be at Rb of 0.3. gte slightly increases with Rb
in the whole range. This is because the heat recovery unit can
recover the additional heat generated by the additional biomass
supplied to the heater. gtex increases against the Rb increment
when Rb is lower than 0.4 and then decrease very slightly with
the increased Rb. This is mainly because the exergy loss of the hea-
ter unit is great and additional exergy brought by the additional
biomass to the heater cannot be sufficiently utilized.
From Fig. 5(b), it can be seen that when Rif is lower than 0.95, ge
and gex slightly increase against the Rif increment while the reverse
variation trends for ge and gex can be detected when Rif is higher
than 0.95. When Rif is lower than 0.9, gte and gtex slightly increase
against the Rif increment while the reverse variation trends for gte
and gtex can be detected when Rif is higher than 0.9. When Rif is
lower than 0.95, gcc increases obviously with the Rif increment.
When Rif is higher than 0.95, gcc varies very slightly with Rif. This
is because when the flow rate of the oxygen carrier is small, the
syngas generated in the gasifier cannot be utilized sufficiently.
Thus, increasing Rif can increase the syngas utilization ratio and
consequently increase the system efficiency and the CO2 seques-
tration rate. When the oxygen carrier flow rate is large, the reduced
format of Fe2O3 is mainly Fe3O4 rather than FeO. Thus, the hydro-
gen generation rate in the oxidizer is lowered and the system effi-
ciency is consequently lowered.
From Fig. 5(c), it can be seen that when Rsc is lower than 1.2, ge,
gex, gte and gtex all slightly increase with the Rsc increment while
the reverse variation trends for these parameters can be detected
when Rsc is higher than 1.2. This is because when Rsc is lower than
1.2, the char generated by coal and biomass pyrolysis cannot be
totally gasified. Hence, with the increase of Rsc, the char conversion
ratio is increased and the system efficiency is consequently
increased. When Rsc is higher than 1.2, additional steam is brought
into the reducer and resists the conversion of fuel, which leads to
the increase of the feed stock and consequently lower the system
efficiency. gcc then decreases with Rsc since the conversion of fuel
in the reducer is lowered.
From Fig. 5(d), it can be seen that when Tg is lower than 700 C,
ge, gex, gte and gtex all slightly increase with the Tg increment while
the reverse variation trends for these parameters can be detected
when Tg is higher than 700 C. This is because when Tg is lower
than 700 C, the carbon brought by the feed stock cannot be totally
converted and the system efficiency increases with the Tg incre-
ment. When Tg is higher than 700 C, the carbon has been totally
converted but the increment of Tg leads to the increment of bio-
mass fed to the heater. Although part of the waste heat generated
in the heater can be recycled, the heat recovery efficiency is not
high. Thus, the system efficiency is actually lowered.
From panels (a)(d) of Fig. 5, it can also be seen that the exergy
efficiency and the total exergy efficiency are a little lower than the
corresponding energy efficiency and total energy efficiency. This is
because the chemical exergies of coal and biomass are a little
higher than the corresponding low heating values. If the heat
recovery unit is not used, the system efficiency will be very low.
This implies that the heat recovery unit is very important for the
efficiency improvement of the whole system.
3.3. Economic analyses for removal of NOx, SOx and CO2
According to the technological process of the CB-CLP system,
the post-combustion capture of the contaminants which has been
widely used in the thermal power plants can be a good choice.
Based on literature review, if NOx is removed with selective cat-
alytic reduction (SCR), SOx is removed with the wet flue gas desul-
phurization (WFGD) and CO2 is sequestrated by mineral, the costs
of removing one ton of NOx, SOx and CO2 should be around 4000 $
(Sorrels et al., 2015; Vijay et al., 2010), 400 $ (Gupta et al., 2013;
Nolan, 2000) and 15 $ (Yeboah et al., 2006), respectively. With
respect to the CB-CLP system operating at the benchmark condi-
tion, the amounts of NOx, SOx and CO2 need removing are
0.31 kg/h, 6.43 kg/h and 196.57 kg/h, respectively. As predicted,
the power generation of the CB-CLP system at the benchmark con-
dition is 236.29 kW. Thus, the costs of removal NOx, SOx and CO2
per kilowatt-hour (kWh) are 0.0108 $, 0.0052 $ and 0.0124 $,
respectively. It is true that the high sulphur content coal leads to
the relatively high cost of SOx removal, but the cost of coal will also
be lowered due to the increment of sulphur content. In addition,
the CB-CLP system generates high concentration N2 as the by pro-
duct, which will also compensate the cost of the contaminants
removal.
4. Conclusion
The CB-CLP system presented in this work operated stably.
Under the benchmark condition, gte, gtex and gcc were calculated
as 39.9%, 37.6% and 96.0%, respectively. The energy efficiencies of
the gasifier, the reducer, the oxidizer, the combustor, the SOFC
and the steam turbine were calculated as 90.03%, 100%, 88.54%,
91.45%, 89.62% and 36.63%, respectively. The exergy efficiencies
of these units were calculated as 91.60%, 95.60%, 89.73%, 78.14%,
72.99% and 65.2%, respectively. Rb of 0.4, Rif of 0.9, Rsc of 1.2 and
Tg of 700 C were found to be the inflection points for the main
system operation results.
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge financial supports from the
National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC, 51576014
and 51576013) and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation
(2015M570096) for this work.
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