The systems, methods and equipment described herein relate generally to clean-coal technology, and more specifically to IGCC technology that can be used to retrofit or upgrade existing pulverized coal (PC) plants or in the building of new power plants. Provided are systems that employ pulverized char, removed from carbonizer volatiles, to provide a source of heat to a carbonizer. Not only are the systems more efficient and generate more power, it is now possible to use high ash coal in pulverized coal plants. Also provided is an internally circulating fluidized bed gasifier that can include a second fluidized bed that can be employed as a syngas cooler, a desulfurizing bed and/or a thermal cracking bed in the same pressure vessel.
In one aspect, provided herein is an Integrated Gasification Combined-Cycle (IGCC) system for retrofitting existing plants. The system generally includes: an internally-circulating fluidized bed carbonizer that forms a syngas and a char from a solid fuel; a syngas cooler in communication with the carbonizer; a separator in communication with the syngas cooler that separates the char from the syngas; a char preparation system in communication with the separator that prepares the char to be injected into the carbonizer; and an injector that receives the pulverized char from the char preparation system and introduces the pulverized char into the carbonizer, whereby the pulverized char provides a source of heat to the carbonizer. The char preparation system can include a cooler that removes heat from the char, a pulverizer in communication with the cooler that pulverizes the char, and an airlock in communication with the pulverizer. In some embodiments, the system includes a warm gas cleanup system and a carbon capture system in communication with the separator that cleans the syngas. In some embodiments, the system includes an ash separator in communication with the pulverizer. In some embodiments, the carbonizer includes a distributor plate disposed within the carbonizer under an annular bubbling bed of char, and a dipleg disposed beneath the carbonizer. Additionally or alternatively, a stream of high-density particles can be added to the annular bubbling bed of char. This increases the flow rate of the char in the bed.
In some embodiments, a carbonizer is provided that includes a draft tube with an outlet, and a draft tube extension mounted on the outlet of the draft tube. The extension includes an upper section and a lower section connected by a conical section such that the upper section has a larger diameter than the lower section. The system also includes a deflector disposed above the outlet of the draft tube that deflects the char emerging from the draft tube downwards, and a dipleg that provides for the downward flow of the char to the internally-circulating fluidized bed. In some embodiments, the carbonizer further includes a thermal cracking fluidized bed disposed on a distributor plate in the upper section of the draft tube extension.
In some embodiments, the carbonizer can include a fluidized bed with an upper bed and a lower bed, wherein the upper bed is a thermal cracking fluidized bed and the lower bed is a carbonizing bed. The bed can be continuous and have two zones that define the upper bed and the lower bed, or the beds can be physically separated, e.g., the upper bed disposed on, e.g., a distributor plate. In some embodiments, an agglomerator is mounted beneath the carbonizer.
In some embodiments, the pulverized char is injected, along with a stream of air for combustion of the char, into an inlet of a draft tube disposed in the carbonizer, and a coal stream is injected into the draft tube at a level above a char combustion zone in the draft tube.
In other embodiments, the pulverized char is injected, along with a stream of air for combustion of the char, into a plenum beneath a distributor plate located beneath an annular fluidized bed of char external to a draft tube disposed in the carbonizer, and coal is injected into an inlet of the draft tube. In some embodiments, an oxidant and a steam for gasifying the annular bed, are also injected into the plenum beneath the distributor plate. Additionally, in some embodiments, some or all of the oxidant for gasifying the annular bed is fed into the annular bed through sparge pipes located above the distributor plates to provide efficient combustion of the char. In some embodiments, a separator sleeve is mounted on an inner radius of the distributor plate such that the flow of the char into the inlet of the draft tube is limited. In any of the embodiments described herein, the solid fuel can be coal, including e.g., high ash coal.
In another aspect, a method of realizing a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from an existing fossil-fueled power plant is provided. The method includes retrofitting an existing power plant to include any of the systems and equipment described herein. In some embodiments, the system includes a carbon capture system and a savings realized by retrofitting the system substantially equals or is less than an expenditure required to build a new coal fired power plant without a carbon capture system.
In some embodiments at least a 20%, 30%, 40% or 50% reduction in carbon dioxide emissions is realized by the retrofitted power plant. In some embodiments, an increased power generating capacity is realized in the retrofitted power plant.
In another aspect, a method for increasing the efficiency of an IGCC subsystem of a power plant is provided. The method includes carbonizing a solid fuel to produce a syngas stream and a char fines content, separating the char fines content from the syngas stream, cooling the char fines content, pulverizing the char fines content, reducing the ash fines concentration in the char fines content, and injecting the char fines into the carbonizer as a fuel. The efficiency of the IGCC subsystem is increased by the return of the char fines to the carbonator.
In some embodiments, the method further includes removing contaminants from the syngas. The method includes filtering the syngas to provide a filtered syngas, adsorbing a halide component from the filtered syngas in a fixed bed reactor, and removing a sulfur component from the syngas with a regenerable desulfurizer that includes two circulating fluidized bed reactors that can be alternately employed to absorb the sulfur and regenerate the sorbent for continuous desulfurization.
Additionally or alternatively, the method can further include reducing the carbon dioxide content in the syngas, by removing a carbon dioxide component from the syngas with a regenerable decarbonizer comprising two circulating fluidized bed reactors that can be alternately employed to absorb the carbon dioxide component and regenerate a calcium oxide sorbent that adsorbs the carbon dioxide component thereby reducing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the syngas, and, optionally, compressing and storing the carbon dioxide component. In some embodiments, the carbonizing step also produces carbon monoxide, and the method further includes removing the carbon monoxide by a sorbent-enhanced reaction.
Additionally or alternatively, the systems or the methods described herein can further include, or include the use of an adiabatic calcium looping system for reducing carbon content in a syngas. The system can include at least one fixed-bed reactor having a fixed sorbent bed, the at least one fixed-bed reactor alternately configured in a pressurized carbonator configuration and a sub-atmospheric pressure calciner configuration, a calcium-based sorbent residing in the fixed sorbent bed for adsorbing the carbon in a syngas when the at least one fixed-bed reactor is configured in the carbonator configuration, and for desorbing the carbon when the at least one fixed-bed reactor is configured in the calciner configuration, and one or more valve mechanisms for alternately configuring the at least one fixed-bed reactor in the carbonator configuration and the calciner configuration.
Reference is made to the accompanying figures and flow diagrams illustrating exemplary embodiments of the present invention, in which:
The systems, method and equipment described herein relate to Integrated Gasification Combined-Cycle (IGCC) technology that can be used to retrofit existing pulverized coal (PC) plants or in building new plants. The various embodiments and subsystems can be employed alone or in combination. Provided herein, e.g., are systems, methods and equipment for separating char from syngas after it emerges from an IGCC carbonizer and, after processing, injecting the char into the carbonizer draft tube as a fuel source. In these plants, char fines are allowed to escape in the volatiles from the carbonator, and are collected from the syngas, cooled, crushed and returned to the gasifier, where they are burned as fuel. This greatly reduces the size of the gasifier system, and enables the system to employ a wide variety of coals, including coals of varying rank, ash content, and moisture content. Smaller reactors are also made possible by the internally-circulating reactors for both the carbonators and desulfurizer, and the fluidized bed syngas cooler.
In some embodiments, the IGCC is a Mild Airblown Integrated Gasification Combined-Cycle (MaGIC) plant. Several suitable embodiments of MaGIC plants are described in International (PCT) Patent Application PCT/US2008/069455, published as WO 2010/075536 on Jul. 1, 2010, which is incorporated herein in its entirety by this reference. Two of the advantages of MaGIC are related to the use of air instead of oxygen, which increases its efficiency and has a 30% lower capital cost due in large part to the elimination of the oxygen plan in traditional IGCCs.
These plants are for use, e.g., in repowering existing coalplants, and due to the small equipment size can be fit into the site of, e.g., a decommissioned boiler. Decommissioning a boiler can also extend the economic life of an existing power plant, which is necessary for the economic repowering of existing plants. The plants described herein also reduce the amount of air needed for gasification, and with it, the size and cost of the gasifier system, by avoiding the combustion of the volatiles released in the gasifier.
Another advantage of the systems, equipment and methods described herein is that the technology is inexpensive enough to provide a new source of electricity, even with carbon capture, that is competitive with electricity provided by the lowest cost alternatives, including pulverized coal plants. Thus, a real cost benefit is realized as opposed to conventional “add-on” technologies that can reduce emissions, but are not economically feasible in the absence of carbon taxes or other legislated sources of funding.
As used herein, the articles “a” and “an” mean “one or more” or “at least one,” unless otherwise indicated. That is, the use of the indefinite article “a” or “an” does not exclude the possibility that more than one of the element is present.
As used herein, the term “plant” and the term “system” are used interchangeably.
As used herein, the terms “retrofit” and “repowering” and “upgrade” are used interchangeably.
As used herein, the terms “volatiles” and “volatile matter” are used interchangeably to refer to mixtures of hydrocarbon gases and vapors, as well as other (non-fuel) gases (e.g., gases that are emitted from coal when it is heated to a sufficiently high temperature. Some of the hydrocarbon vapors are called tars, in reference to their appearance when they condense.
An exemplary process flow diagram is depicted in
One of the benefits of burning the char fines in the carbonizer is that it eliminates the problems associated with the partial gasification alternatives. In retrofitting existing plants, the existing boiler can be decommissioned to make room for the new equipment described herein, and to life-extend the power plant thereby rendering the upgrade affordable. It also eliminates the inefficiency of burning significant amounts of char in the decommissioned boiler.
The current systems and methods are also advantageous with respect to external fluidized bed designs where the char fines are burned in the external fluidized bed, and costly coolers and filters are necessary. In addition, in the external fluidized bed, the need for the combustion air to burn the char fines greatly expands the volumetric flowrate that then must be cooled and cleaned.
An exemplary char preparation system is depicted in
The separator of
The principal flow through an exemplary internally circulating fluidized bed carbonizer or gasifier is depicted in
Compared with bubbling-bed gasifiers, circulating fluidized bed reactors have more intense mixing, which reduces the temperature gradients. This, in turn, reduces the likelihood of clinkering, and enables the reactor to have separate zones for special purposes such as preserving the volatiles and providing an oxygen-free zone for pyrolysis, which reduces tar formation. The more intense mixing also makes scale up easier.
Benefits of the internally circulating gasifier, compared with the externally circulating system, include its simplicity and much shorter height. An exemplary gasifier constructed in accordance with the flow diagram of
Moreover, the externally-circulating gasifier coal feed is about 10-times smaller than that of the systems described herein. Accordingly, its coal must be crushed to sizes of, e.g., minus 0.03 inches versus, e.g., minus 0.25 inches for the systems described herein. This makes it difficult for the externally-circulating gasifier cyclones to capture the char fines, and as a result, only highly-reactive low-rank coals are efficiently gasified in the transport gasifier.
The coarser coal feed that can be employed in the systems and equipment described herein is advantageous as the coal is coarse enough to remain in the char bed until most of it is gasified. Eventually, about 15% of the coal becomes fine enough to be entrained by the syngas. However, these particles are still coarse enough to be readily captured by the cyclone. Thus, the carbon utilization depends on the efficiency of the char burner, which, if adequately sized, should be as high as that of other pulverized-coal systems, generally over 99%, with both low-rank and high-rank coals. As discussed in connection with
Referring to
In some embodiments, a spouted fluidized bed carbonizer is employed. A fluidized bed gasifier with central jet to promote circulation is referred to as a “spouted bed” if the central jet penetrates the surface and a “jetting bed” if the central jet does not penetrate the surface. In some embodiments, a spouted reactor is used because it excels at keeping the entire volume in the reactor mixed—a quality known as “global mixing”. For example, global mixing may occur in reactors as large as 15 ft in diameter, the size of reactor that can be utilized in connection with various embodiments, e.g., to feed a 400-MW power plant from a single vessel.
The draft tube generally promotes circulation, and also preserves the volatiles by isolating them from the air in the annulus. The flow through the draft tube is in dilute phase, so its pressure drop is low compared with the pressure at the bottom of the fluidized bed. This promotes char circulation, which in turn further helps keep the char temperatures uniform throughout the carbonizer. The mixing avoids the occurrence of hot spots which could clinker the ash, or cold regions in which the gasification would be too slow.
In some embodiments, the flow rates of the steam and air injected into the bottom of the annulus is metered to provide the desired amount of water-gas. The heat created by the exothermal reaction (of air reacting with char, forming carbon monoxide) may be modified or controlled such that it equals the heat required by the endothermic reaction (steam plus char forming hydrogen). The water-gas may pass through the char, and emerge from the top of the carbonizer (e.g., with the volatiles emerging from the draft tube), thereby forming the syngas. In some embodiments, the nitrogen from the air remains mixed with the syngas.
In some embodiments, the air and steam are injected into a plenum at the bottom of the char bed, and enter the bed through bubble caps in the plenum's top surface as described in International (PCT) Patent Application PCT/US2008/069455, published as WO 2010/075536 on Jul. 1, 2010, at e.g.,
In some embodiments, excess char may be removed from the carbonizer via a hopper at its bottom, at a rate determined by a control valve. An exemplary control valve uses the pressure of steam flow to regulate char flow through the valve. The char flow rate may be controlled, e.g., by a level sensor at the side of the carbonizer, so the top of the bed is at a desired point. In some embodiments, the desired point is the same altitude as the top of the draft tube. Bottom-removal of the char may be preferred because, for example, it reduces or eliminates the possibility of a buildup of oversize particles in the char bed that might otherwise defluidize the bed. From the “L” valve, the char may then pass through the char cooler, which may be cooled by steam tubes, before being depressurized through an airlock.
In some embodiments, the pyrolysis of the coal will be largely completed by the time the particles leave the draft tube. To the extent that more reaction time is needed, pyrolysis may be further accomplished or completed in the upper region of the char bed.
The elutriates emerging from the draft tube are returned to the annular bed by an overhead deflector. “Elutriates” are particles too coarse to be entrained in the syngas, given sufficient freeboard to avoid their being splashed out of the reactor. The deflector can be employed to reduce or even eliminate the need for freeboard.
Conversely, char fines, whether emitted from the draft tube or annular bed, are particles small enough to be entrained by the syngas, no matter how high the freeboard. The particles leaving the deflector over the draft tube thereby diverts elutriates back to the bed, while allowing char fines to leave overhead.
In some embodiments, the warm-gas cleanup system operates below the tar condensation temperature. If so, an upper bed can be added which thermally-cracks the tars in the volatiles, as depicted in
The upper beds depicted in
In some embodiments, the upper fluidized beds 784, 984 depicted in
The funnel-like shape of the draft tube extender 780 in carbonizer 710 of
In
If pyrolysis is essentially complete in the draft tube, only the flow from the draft tube need be thermally cracked to remove the tars. However, in the event that pyrolysis is not completed in the time that the coal is within the draft tube, some volatiles can still be emitted from the annular bed. If the emission is sufficient to foul the downstream equipment, the upper bed can be extended across the entire reactor diameter, which will increase its diameter. Additionally or alternatively, the material in the upper bed can be made of coarse, dense materials, whose superficial velocity is relatively high, which limits the amount by which the carbonizer diameter must be increased.
Yet another alternative carbonizer design is shown in
The agglomerator 816 works by first burning char particles in a fluidized bed in a top section 822, which heats the particles enough to soften the ash and form larger particles (or, agglomerates). The agglomerates then flow through the lower section 824 of the agglomerator 816, where the airflow is sufficiently low to keep from fluidizing the particles. Accordingly the particles are cooled in counterflow by the air introduced at the bottom. By the time they reach the bottom of the agglomerator they are cool enough to be removed through the airlock underneath.
In contrast to the embodiment depicted in
In some embodiments, sparge pipes 818 shown in
One difference between the designs of
The effect of the char density is that, in a high-density bed embodiment, the hydrostatic pressure of the annular bed contributes significantly to the circulation of the char, while in a low-density bed embodiment, circulation is primarily due to the entering of the draft tube. The latter is a weaker mechanism than the former, so the circulation flows are much lower, typically, under 30 times the coal feed rate for the design of
A high density design such as that shown in
In the embodiment of
Yet another alternative carbonizer, depicted in
Another embodiment of the internally-circulating carbonizer is depicted in
Extension 1000 extends pressure vessel 1024 below distributor 1004 and reaching to the bottom of the drain 1012. The extension acts as a dipleg 1018 that increases the flow of char stream 1014 by increasing the hydrostatic head of char entering at the bottom of draft tube 1008. The extension 1018 provides sufficient hydrostatic head, which enhances circulation through the draft tube even if the coal is very reactive, or at low firing rates, both of which would reduce the height of the gasifier bed 1022. High circulation flowrate can be thus achieved to provide sufficient heat to the incoming coal to bring it to the bed temperature and thoroughly pyrolyze it. High circulation rates also prevent the agglutination of caking coals in the draft tube.
The circulation flowrate can be reduced if the char density is too low, due to the formation of cenospheres in highly-caking coals. The flow rate can be increased by the addition of inert granular material, such as dolomite, that increases the average density of the circulating solids.
In some embodiments, the systems and methods described herein further employ an ACL system for removal or reduction of carbon dioxide.
In the exemplary embodiment of
Simultaneously, a vacuum in reactor 1104 created by compressor 1124 enables the sorbent in reactor 1104 to be calcined, which emits a stream of carbon dioxide through outlet 1118 that is cooled by cooler 1122 to enable compressor 1124 to operate efficiently. Further stages of compression in compressor assembly 1120, of which only two stages are shown, each include a compressor 1124 followed by an intercooler 1126. Compressor assembly 1120 compresses the carbon dioxide to the pipeline pressure. The final stage of assembly 120 includes cooler 1128, which cools the carbon dioxide before it enters pipeline 1128 on its way to the sequestration site.
Additional embodiments of exemplary ACL systems are discussed and shown in International (PCT) Patent Application No. PCT/US2010/######, entitled “Systems, Devices And Methods For Calcium Looping,” by Alex Wormser, filed on Sep. 20, 2010, the entire contents of which is expressly incorporated herein by this reference.
It is noted that embodiments of the inventions described herein may include similar features, elements, arrangements, configurations, steps and the like. Therefore, for clarity purposes, some of the figures appended hereto, and referenced herein, include common reference numerals. However, common reference numerals are in no way meant to indicate that the commonly referenced features are identical or substantially similar, but instead simply indicates that the features are generally similar (such as features that perform a similar function).
This application claims the benefit of, and priority to, U.S. Patent Application Ser. No. 61/243,687, filed Sep. 18, 2009, entitled “Coal Gasification,” U.S. Patent Application Ser. No. 61/243,906, filed Sep. 18, 2009, entitled “Pressure-Swing Calcium Looping (PSCL),” U.S. Patent Application Ser. No. 61/244,035, filed Sep. 19, 2009, entitled “Calcium Looping,” U.S. Patent Application Ser. No. 61/365,187, filed Jul. 16, 2010 and entitled “Carbon Capture Systems for Airblown Integrated Gasification Combined Cycles,” and International (PCT) Patent Application Serial Number PCT/US2009/069455, filed Dec. 23, 2009, entitled “Mild Gasification Combined-Cycle Powerplant.” This application is also related to International (PCT) Patent Application Serial Number PCT/US2008/067022, filed Jun. 13, 2008, entitled “Mild Gasification Combined-Cycle Powerplant,” and International (PCT) Patent Application Serial Number PCT/US2010/049522, entitled “Systems, Devices And Methods For Calcium Looping,” by Alex Wormser, filed on Sep. 20, 2010. The entire contents of these applications are incorporated herein in their entirety by this reference.
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Parent | PCT/US2009/069455 | Dec 2009 | US |
Child | 13394823 | US |