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Title: Liquid CO2/Coal Slurry for Feeding Low Rank Coal to Gasifiers

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1122274· OSTI ID:1122274
 [1];  [1];  [1]
  1. Electric Power Research Institute, Inc., Palo Alto, CA (United States)

This study investigates the practicality of using a liquid CO2/coal slurry preparation and feed system for the E-Gas™ gasifier in an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) electric power generation plant configuration. Liquid CO2 has several property differences from water that make it attractive for the coal slurries used in coal gasification-based power plants. First, the viscosity of liquid CO2 is much lower than water. This means it should take less energy to pump liquid CO2 through a pipe compared to water. This also means that a higher solids concentration can be fed to the gasifier, which should decrease the heat requirement needed to vaporize the slurry. Second, the heat of vaporization of liquid CO2 is about 80% lower than water. This means that less heat from the gasification reactions is needed to vaporize the slurry. This should result in less oxygen needed to achieve a given gasifier temperature. And third, the surface tension of liquid CO2 is about 2 orders of magnitude lower than water, which should result in finer atomization of the liquid CO2 slurry, faster reaction times between the oxygen and coal particles, and better carbon conversion at the same gasifier temperature. EPRI and others have recognized the potential that liquid CO2 has in improving the performance of an IGCC plant and have previously conducted systemslevel analyses to evaluate this concept. These past studies have shown that a significant increase in IGCC performance can be achieved with liquid CO2 over water with certain gasifiers. Although these previous analyses had produced some positive results, they were still based on various assumptions for liquid CO2/coal slurry properties.

Research Organization:
Electric Power Research Institute, Inc., Palo Alto, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
DOE Contract Number:
FE0007977
OSTI ID:
1122274
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English