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SUWIC, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, University of Sheffield, Mappin Street, Sheffield S1 3JD, UK
School of Process, Environmental and Materials Engineering, Leeds University, Clarendon Road, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK
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Article history:
In view of the world-wide problem of energy sustainability and greenhouse gas production
(carbon dioxide), it is timely to review the issues involved in generating heat and power
from all fuels and especially new (to the UK) solid fuels, including high moisture fuels such
16 December 2010
as wood, SRF, oil shale, tar sands and brown coal, which will become major international
fuels as oil and gas become depleted. The combustion properties of some of these materials
are significantly different from traditional coal, oil and gas fuels, however the technology
proposed herein is also applicable to these conventional fuels.
Keywords:
This paper presents some innovative combustion system options and the associated
technical factors that must be considered for their implementation. For clarity of under-
standing, the novel concepts will be largely presented in terms of a currently developing
sequestration
Condensing boiler
One of the most important characteristics of many solid fuels to be used in the future
Wood combustion
(including oil shale and brown coal) is their high moisture content of up to 60%. This could
Power generation
be removed by utilising low grade waste heat that is widely available in industry to dry the
fuel and thus reduce transport costs. Burning such dried wood for power generation also
increases the energy available from combustion and thus acts as a thermal transformer by
upgrading the low grade heat to heat available at combustion temperatures.
The alternative approach presented here is to recover the latent heat by condensing the
extrinsic moisture and the water formed during combustion. For atmospheric combustion,
the temperature of the condensed combustion products is below the dew point at about
55e65 C and is only suitable for recovery in an efficient district heating system. However,
in order to generate power from the latent heat, the condensation temperature must be
increased to the level where the heat can be used in the thermodynamic power cycle. This
can be achieved by increasing the combustion pressure to above 80 bar, resulting in the
recovered latent heat being available at more than 200 C. It can then be used to increase
the cycle efficiency by about 15% by pre-heating the boiler water and/or combustion air etc.
A further advantage is that the high pressure of the combustion gases also reduces the
superheater tube stress since it can balance the steam pressure.
The key advantage of this high pressure flue gas is that it is above the pressure at which
carbon dioxide condenses to a liquid or supercritical gas at atmospheric temperature. Thus
when used with oxy-fuel combustion, the carbon dioxide flue gas from which the moisture
has been condensed can be cooled to atmospheric temperature and the supercritical CO2 can
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 44 (0) 114 222 7563; fax: 44 (0) 114 222 7501.
E-mail address: q.chen@sheffield.ac.uk (Q. Chen).
0961-9534/$ e see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.biombioe.2010.12.026
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b i o m a s s a n d b i o e n e r g y 3 5 ( 2 0 1 1 ) 9 9 9 e1 0 0 7
be fed directly into the pipes leading to the sequestration site. An important consideration of
these strategies is to ensure that non-condensable gases in the exhaust, including oxygen
and nitrogen, do not adversely affect the condensation processes.
When oxy-fuel combustion is used, the flame temperature must be moderated by a cool
diluent. Recycled carbon dioxide is often proposed for this duty. However, since the latent
heat is recovered, the moisture or even additional water can fulfil this role. This latter
option may be advantageous since it is more efficient to pump wood chip fuel in water into
the high pressure zone rather than feed solid wood particles. Surplus water can be simply
drained and the wet wood chips are a good fuel when the latent heat of the moisture in the
fuel gases is recovered into the power cycle.
Bearing in mind that it is much more efficient to pump a liquid to high pressure than to
compress the same material as a gas, indicates that cryogenic oxygen is a suitable material
to use for an efficient power station that generates energy from biomass (or other fuels
such as coal etc).
Finally, combustion of the hydrogen from the wateregas reaction with oxygen allows the
steam temperature in the turbine to be increased to the gas-turbine engine range of
1000e1400 C and hence the biomass and/or fossil fuel cycle efficiency can be well over 60%!
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1.
Introduction
2.
HHV (MJ/kg)
Fixed Carbon
Volatiles
Ash
C
H
O
N
S
Coal
White Oak
Pine bark
RDF
55.8
33.9
10.3
84.2
5.6
5.5
1.3
3.5
17.2
81.3
1.5
50.2
5.5
43.8
0.4
33.9
54.7
0.4
56.5
5.6
37.9
9.8
67.6
18.9
61.2
8.2
26.6
1.3
0.2
31.75
19.42
21.78
22.30
b i o m a s s a n d b i o e n e r g y 3 5 ( 2 0 1 1 ) 9 9 9 e1 0 0 7
3.
Condensing boilers
1001
temperature is about 55e65 C and it follows that the temperature of the water returned from a central heating system
(or from the hot water heating system), must be about 30 C, i.e.
well below this temperature. This requires an underfloor
heating system of a high surface area of the radiators in the
building. Similar considerations apply to district heating
schemes if the latent heat of the moisture is to be recovered
from the flue gases. Most district heating schemes in the UK
presently use delivery and return water temperatures of about
120 C and 70 C respectively, although some Scandinavian
district heating schemes do utilise the latent heat [7].
However, if wood is to be used for a combined heat and
power (CHP) or district heating scheme, then there will be
a significantly larger amount of latent heat that could be
recovered by condensing the flue gases.
4.
5.
1002
b i o m a s s a n d b i o e n e r g y 3 5 ( 2 0 1 1 ) 9 9 9 e1 0 0 7
250
200
150
35 % H2O
30% H2O
25% H2O
20% H2O
15% H2O
10% H2O
5% H2O
100
50
0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
Pressure (bar)
Fig. 1 e Flue gas dew point temperature as a function of pressure and moisture content.
6.
this curve applies for pure gas and for a real system and account
must be taken of the actual composition of the mixture. This
issue is discussed in the literature [9] where it is shown that gas
impurities can have a profound effect of the phase equilibrium
of the carbon dioxide rich stream. One main conclusion from
this observation is that high quality oxygen (0.5% N2) should be
used for the combustion process. Also, products of incomplete
combustion such as CO and contaminants such as sulphur
compounds must be removed at an appropriate point.
The desire to operate with a high flue gas condensation
temperature and an output of supercritical liquid carbon
dioxide both require high pressure combustion at above 80 bar.
Detailed design studies are needed to optimise this pressure for
the fuel combustion; however, 100 bar can be regarded as an
approximate value at this stage of the discussion.
7.
80
60
50
Liquid CO2
Solid
40
30
Gas CO2
20
10
Critical Point
70
Pressure (bar)
0
-100
Triple Point
-80
-60
-40
-20
20
Temperature ( C)
Fig. 2 e Phase diagram for pure carbon dioxide.
40
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The hopper full of gas will then release to the low pressure region
and must be discharged, or it must be pumped back up to the
high pressure level before being returned. This loss can be
minimised by using a displacement piston. Compressing solid
fuels to high pressure requires very little energy since they are
largely incompressible but the space between particles represents a problem. This problem is usually solved with coal fired
gasifiers by using slurry made from the fuel in water. For
a combustor operating at high pressure with latent heat
recovery, the energy required to evaporate the water added to
make wood fuel slurry will be largely recovered in the
condenser. The effect of the amount of water that must be added
the wood to make pumpable material and the size of the wood
particles will obviously have an effect on the combustion as
discussed below.
Slurries that contain particles can interfere with the operation of valves in the pump. A valveless system can be
designed whereby the particles are fed through the pressure
gradient produced in water spinning in a zero liquid flow
centrifugal turbine configuration. Such a system would allow
the particles to be transferred to the high pressure system
with a smaller proportion of water. Nevertheless, the
optimum proportion of moisture in the high pressure
combustor still remains to be determined.
The problem of feeding solid recovered fuel (SRF) as an alternative to wood depends on the physical nature of the material.
Flock can be fed as a water slurry as above, whilst the energy to
feed semi-solid SRF may be minimised by extruding a cylindrical
worm of material directly into the high pressure environment.
8.
High pressure combustion of solid fuel
(wood)
There are several potential combustor configurations that can
be considered for the high pressure combustion of wood. These
Table 2 e Potential combustor configurations for high pressure wood combustion [10,11].
Advantages
Bubbling fluidised
bed
Circulating fluidised
bed
Entrained pulverised
combustion
Moving grate
Rotary kiln
Disadvantages
High investment and operating costs;
Possible bed agglomeration for high alkali
biomass fuels;
High dust load in the flue gas
High investment and operating costs;
High alkali biomass fuels;
High dust load in the flue gas;
High sensitivity for ash slagging
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9.
30
Oxygen production
20
15
10
5
0
Wood firing plant (literature) Retrofitted Boiler (measured)
11.
10.
25
Issues of scale
Emissions
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12.
1005
1006
b i o m a s s a n d b i o e n e r g y 3 5 ( 2 0 1 1 ) 9 9 9 e1 0 0 7
Fig. 7 e Phase 3, final stage of the Hi-h power generation system with CO2 sequestration for fuels varying from coal, oil, gas,
biomass and SRF, to the oil shale and brown coal fuels that will be used increasingly as gas and oil are depleted.
b i o m a s s a n d b i o e n e r g y 3 5 ( 2 0 1 1 ) 9 9 9 e1 0 0 7
13.
Conclusions
[2]
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[3]
[4]
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[7]
[8]
[9]
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
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