DESIGN, FABRICATION, ASSEMBLY AND BENCH TESTING OF A TEXACO INFRARED RATIO PYROMETER SYSTEM FOR THE MEASUREMENT OF REACTION CHAMBER TEMPERATURE
Reliable measurement of gasifier reaction chamber temperature is important for the proper operation of slagging, entrained-flow gasification processes. Historically, thermocouples have been used as the main measurement technique, with the temperature inferred from syngas methane concentration being used as a backup measurement. While these have been sufficient for plant operation in many cases, both techniques suffer from limitations. The response time of methane measurements is too slow to detect rapid upset conditions, and thermocouples are subject to long-term drift, as well as slag attack, which eventually leads to failure of the thermocouple. Texaco's Montebello Technology Center (MTC) has developed an infrared ratio pyrometer system for measuring gasifier reaction chamber temperature. This system has a faster response time than both methane and thermocouples, and has been demonstrated to provide reliable temperature measurements for longer periods of time when compared to thermocouples installed in the same MTC gasifier. In addition, the system can be applied to commercial gasifiers without any significant scale-up issues. The major equipment items, the purge system, and the safety shutdown system in a commercial plant are essentially identical to the prototypes at MTC. The desired result of this DOE program is ''a bench-scale prototype, either assembled or with critical components (laboratory) tested in a convincing manner.'' The prototype of the pyrometer system (including gasifier optical access port) that was designed, assembled and tested for this program, has had previous prototypes that have been built and successfully tested under actual coal and coke gasification conditions in three pilot units at MTC. It was the intent of the work performed under the auspices of this program to review and update the existing design, and to fabricate and bench test an updated system that can be field tested in one or more commercial gasifiers during a follow on phase of this program. For all intents and purposes, the development, bench testing and pilot unit testing of this temperature measurement system has already been done, and was mostly a matter of getting the hardware ready for a commercial field test. The benefits of field-testing are (1) Texaco will gain long-term commercial operating experience and (2) commercial gasifier operators will gain confidence that this system can perform reliably under true commercial plant conditions. This work was performed by Texaco at its Montebello Technology Center in South El Monte, California.
- Research Organization:
- Texaco, Inc. (US)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- FC26-99FT40684
- OSTI ID:
- 812531
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 31 Mar 2001
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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