The Energy Blog

Hydromax Receives DOE Funding

HydroMax(R), an advanced gasification technology being developed by Diversified Energy Corporation (DEC) and licensed from Alchemix Corporation, was selected by the Department of Energy (DOE) from a pool of 1,318 applicants for research and technology transfer funding.

DEC has teamed with CertainTeed Gypsum, one of North America's leading gypsum wallboard manufacturers for the project with the goal of reducing and stabilizing natural gas costs. DEC will conduct tests, design activities, and commercialization planning focused on utilizing HydroMax(R) to gasify coal for the production of synthetic gas for industrial applications.

The HydroMax(R) technology is based on a molten-metals reactor approach. It offers several critical advantages for industrial customers such as CertainTeed Gypsum, including scaling to the 5-100 MWe output range, a compact size for simple integration, hydrocarbon input flexibility, high reliability, substantive reductions in capital and O&M costs compared to traditional gasifiers, and high efficiencies. Previous technology development includes multiple bench-scale tests along with extensive analyses and modeling.

Cleaner Iron Production with Corex Process

A special manufacturing process is making the production of iron much more environmentally friendly. The outstanding feature of the “Corex process” is that it uses conventional coal instead of coking coal, the customary ingredient.

Siemens is currently building the world’s largest Corex-based plant in China. Scheduled to begin operation in late 2007, this steel mill requires no coking plant, an element that typically accounts for a major share of emissions.

Corex is a smelting reduction process: Coal gasification, iron ore reduction, and liquefaction of the resulting iron are combined in one process. The gases produced can immediately be used for heating or for generating electricity in a gas and steam turbine power plant.

This plant burns uncoked coal, which means that the coking plant – one of the primary sources of emissions from an iron and steel plant – is now redundant. At the high gasification temperatures of the coal in the smelting reactor, organic compounds are completely reduced to their basic gaseous components and organic sulfur hydrides are converted to carbonated and/or hydrogenous gases. In a separate process in a melter gasifier, these vile smelling, and highly toxic, compounds are almost completely combined in sponge iron, aggregates, and slag.

Z-gen Solid Waste Gasification System

Ze-gen LLC was formed in mid-2004 in order to develop and deploy efficient gasification systems that convert municipal solid waste into clean energy.

The process uses molten iron to cause a chemical reaction in the waste, producing synthetic gas (hydrogen and carbon monoxide) and a small amount of methane from the construction debris. The only other by-products are some metal, which can be recycled, and silica, which can be reused in road construction.

The system is designed to process mundane waste streams and generate significant amounts of energy with a single stage gasifier, which results in extremely low thermal losses. The company's facilities can be expanded into modules, which process 450 tons of waste per day and yield 30 megawatts of electricity, enough energy to power almost 25,000 homes.

Gasification Process Key to Low Cost Diesel

Researchers at UC Riverside have unveiled a new process that can convert sewer sludge, wood, agricultural waste, plain old trash or even plastics into diesel oil for $1.00 a gallon. Viresco Energy, will pay $15 million for a pilot plant to be built in the next two years.

The the hydro-gasification conversion process, originally developed to produce clean-burning gases from coal has been adapted to be used with wet wastes.  Whereas traditional gasification uses oxygen, the new technique uses hydrogen and steam at nearly 1,500 degrees to break apart the feed stock into a gas made up of its molecular components.

After gasification, the resulting gas then go through a couple of other steps and It comes out as water, wax and diesel. There is little waste, up to 85 percent of the feed material becomes usable liquid fuel at the other end.

"The system requires no additional fuel or energy other than the chemical energy in the waste feed," said Colin Hackett, manager of the Alternative Fuels and Renewable Energy Program at UCR.   "This process has enormous potential for energy conversion from any wet-waste that contains carbon."

Rocketdyne Plug Flow Gasifier

The Rocketdyne plug flow gasifier (RPFG) (also referred to by DOE as compact gasifier) is a single stage plug flow entrained flow slagging gasifier, with dry coal feed, short residence time, and quench. The gasifier also features a rapid mix multi-port feed injector and actively cooled walls.  These features are claimed to result in lower capital cost, higher efficiency, greater durability, higher availability, ability to handle low rank coal/lignite and better carbon conversion all resulting in a lower cost of electricity in associated IGCC plants. 

This combination of features potentially overcomes most of the drawbacks of current commercial gasifiers. In a EPRI presentation they stated: "with further enhancements, e.g. Jacobs desaturator, this could be the best gasifier for CO2 capture." The gasifier is in early development with pilot plant tests not scheduled for 2007. 

This gasifier is an advanced gasifier being developed by DOE that promises higher efficiencies and lower capital cost than present gasifers as well as excellent carbon capture.  If development goes as planned the technology will have been demonstrated on a pilot scale by 2010.

Requirements for the gasifier include operation 1000 psig or more at 2600 F and in the presence of corrosive H2S gas and slag. The high heating rates of this gasifier make possible very short gasification residence times, increased thermal efficiency and carbon conversions approaching 100 percent. Another result of the high heating rates is that the reactor is one-tenth the size of an equivalent conventional gasifier, reducing capital costs.

More Gasifier & IGCC Information

I ran across these links to presentations on gasifiers and IGCC, which I hadn't seen before and found them informative.  Eventually some of the info will be incorporated into a revision of the "About Gasifier" and "About IGCC" posts, but for now you will have to peruse them by yourself if you have any interest.  They were all found on a search for "Rocketdyne Gasifier" although they have much more information.  They are all quite recent, so all the better.

An outline of the content of each presentation follows:

Technical Note: Gasification

Gasifiers convert carbonaceous feedstock (coal, wood, cornstalks, most any biomass) into gaseous products.  The process usually takes place at high temperatures and pressures and with a carefully controlled amount of oxygen.  The oxygen can come from air, pure oxygen or from steam. At operating conditions a chemical reaction occurs that converts the feedstock into a synthesis gas or "syngas".   The syngas is a mixture of predominately carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2).  The amount of heat that can be recovered from burning syngas can be as much as 50% higher than direct combustion of the feedstock.

Gasifiers can divided into three general catagories:

1. Moving Bed Gasifiers (dry ash)
2. Fluidized Bed Gasifiers and
3. Entrained Bed Gasifiers

Descriptions of several specific types and subtypes can be found at this NETL site.