UKERC Energy Data Centre: Projects

Projects: Projects for Investigator

• To assess the potential corrosive effects of deposits formed on coal-fired and coal/waste co-fired gasifier fuel-gas/syngas heat exchangers in Air Blown Gasification Cycle (ABGC) and Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) systems.
• To determine the composition ranges of deposits in ABGC and IGCC fuel-gas/syngas heat exchangers.
• To quantitatively assess the rates at which these deposits cause downtime corrosion and the effectiveness of proposed preventative measures.
• To assess the potential for the deposits to cause synergistic degradation (at high and low temperatures), and to measure the resulting increase in material damage rates.
• To identify exposure/operating conditions/materials which could lead to rapid heat exchanger failures.

A wide variety of gasification systems are continuing to be developed around the world, including Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) and the UK developed Air Blown Gasification Cycle (ABGC) systems. Originally, these systems were developed to be fired on various grades of coal, but there is now interest in using a more diverse range of solid fuels (eg co-firing coal with waste or biomass, using low grade coals and heavy fuel oils) in order to reduce environmental impact and fuelcosts.

All gasification technologies require a heat exchanger (often called either a syngas cooler or fuel gas cooler) between the gasifier and the gas cleaning system. The duty required from this heat exchanger varies depending on the type of gasifier, gas-cleaning requirements (eg hot dry cleaning or wet scrubbing) and steam cycle needs.