GAS-L: Gas turbines for biomass-fuelled IGCC

["Henk de Lange" <delangeh@tin.it>]

Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 18:06:41 +0100
Message-ID: <000201c08a15$d9c3ad80$0c20a8c0@bioelettrica.it>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook CWS, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2911.0)
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.50.4522.1200
Importance: Normal
In-Reply-To: <005801c08786$d6a6d8c0$0f0aa8c0@sct.fr>

Dear Joseph Fonio,

At several places in the world, people are trying to
build, or have built, gasification units that provide the producer gas
obtained with the gasification of biomass to a gas turbine.
The scales involved range from 6 MWe to about 30 MWe.
The installations I know of, with respect to all others that
may be at some stage of implementation, are:

Sweden (Varnamo): pressurised gasifier built by the company
BIOFLOW (consisting of the Swedish utility Sydkraft and
the gasification technology provider Foster Wheeler), which provides
the gas obtained from the gasification of wood, but other materials
have been tried successfully too, to a combined cycle featuring a
4.5 MWe TYPHOON machine manufactured by EGT (Alstom) and a
1.8 MWe steam turbine. Until recently, to my knowledge, this is the only
biomass-fuelled Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plant that has
actually
worked (about 3,500 hours of integrated operation experience).
The plant was mothballed last year.

UK (Yorkshire): atmospheric gasifier. The gasification technology is from
TPS,
already referenced here on the list. Here too, the producer gas is
fed to a combined cycle featuring a TYPHOON. In this plant, the heat
recovery steam generator is equipped with supplementary firing on
producer gas. As a result, the total net power production is about
8 MWe. As far as I know, this plant is currently being commissioned and,
perhaps, the first integrated operating experience has been obtained
recently.
The fuel is wood from short rotation coppice.
This project is know as the ARBRE project, it also has a website under that
name.

USA (Burlington, Vermont). atmospheric gasifier developed by Battelle and
commercialised by FERCO. The plant is operating already some time but
the producer gas is fed to an existing boiler, although tests were done
with a gas turbine. The fuel is wood residues.
I believe that there exist ideas to feed the
producer gas later to a gas turbine yet to be installed.
This is the only gasifier that produces a medium-BTU producer gas. All
others produce low-BTU fuel-gas.

Italy (Pisa). atmospheric gasifier by Lurgi. The produced fuel-gas is fed to
a combined
cycle featuring a 13 MWe PGT10 gas turbine manufactured by Nuovo Pignone
and a 3 MWe steam turbine. Total net power production is about 14 MWe.
The first part of the civil works for this plant was recently completed.
Completion of commissioning is expected by the end of 2002.
The fuel is from short rotation forestry, wood and agricultural residues.
This project is referred to as the THERMIE Energy Farm (TEF) project.

Brazil. atmospheric gasifier by TPS. This plant will
produce about 30 MWe and features a GE LM2500 gas turbine.
The fuel is eucalyptus wood.
As far as I know, this plant is in the design phase.

In general it appears as if there are not many companies capable, and
willing
to deliver a turn-key Biomass-fuelled IGCC system. Many are quite happy
to provide the gasifier or to licence the gasification technology.

Some of the main companies involved in gasification technology for BIGCC
applications
are: Carbona (Finland, USA), Foster Wheeler (Finland, USA), Lurgi (Germany),
TPS (Sweden). (alphabetical order).

I believe that the gas turbines used, or proposed so far for BIGCC are
basically:
TYPHOON (EGT, Alstom), 4.7 MWe
PGT5 and PGT10 (Nuovo Pignone, GE), 5-6 MWe respectively about 11-13 MWe.
LM2500 (GE). About 23 MWe.
I would expect that other gas turbine manufacturers will become interested
too in smaller-scale
applications when BIGCC units become economically viable.
but today, I don't know of any other manufacturers capable of, and willing
to, offering
small-scale gas turbines for low-BTU, BIGCC applications.

Some comments on the following:

 > Malcolm D. Lefcort wrote:
 > To fuel a gas turbine with a low calorific value producer gas
 > made from
 > wood residue is generally quite complicated and very expensive.  The
 > producer gas has to be free of tar and particulate matter and
 > it must be
 > pressurized to at least 10 atmospheres.

The combustion chamber of the gas turbine itself can burn tars
to a certain extent provided they remain in a gaseous state.
The accepted tar concentration
depends on combustion chamber design.
As regards the pressure, the above-listed gas turbines would even need
above 17 bara pressurisation of the fuel-gas.
Other gas contaminants have to removed too, to
protect the gas turbine from corrosion and/or to avoid too high
emission-levels.

 > In addition, its calorific value has to be constant.  Wet
 > wood residue is
 > therefore almost always dried before it is gasified.  Small amounts of
 > natural gas can be used to maintain a constant calorific value of the
 > producer gas.

It must also be considered that in case of gasification with air (which is
adopted by all above-referred plants) at a temperature
between 800 and 1000 oC, the water contained in the wood-fuel
will mostly not participate to the gasification reactions. It will just
evaporate, "stealing" heat from the gasification reactions, and remain
water vapour in the fuel-gas, thus lowering its heating value.

 > A simpler approach in the 5 to 10 MWe power range is to
 > indirectly fire a
 > gas turbine with the products of combustion of wood residue
 > using a high
 > temperature, gas-to-air heat exchanger.

Arguably, BIGCC technology will never become economically viable
below, say, 20 MWe. (I know, some will either argue higher break/even-levels
or worse, <sad grin>).
The existing projects with a lower production
capacity are aimed at the demonstration of the technology.

Hope this helps.

Henk de Lange
 >
 >
 > Hello everybody at the gasification list,
 >
 > I have heard about gas turbines used with gasification units,
 > but I do not
 > know any reference of it. Could someone give me examples of
 > gasification
 > plants using the producer gas in gas turbines ? Are there
 > companies that
 > develop (or sell) this kind of technologies ?
 >
 > Thank you.
 >
 > Joseph Fonio
 >
 > ----------------------------------------
 > OSER SA
 > 317 rue de la Garenne
 > 92 741 Nanterre Cedex
 > France
 > tel : (33).1.55.66.03.60
 > fax : (33).1.55.66.03.66
 > visit our web site :
 > http://www.oser.net
 > ----------------------------------------

The Gasification List is sponsored by
USDOE BioPower Program http://www.eren.doe.gov/biopower/
and PRM Energy Systems http://www.prmenergy.com

Other Sponsors, Archives and Information
http://www.nrel.gov/bioam/
http://www.crest.org/renewables/gasification-list-archive
http://solstice.crest.org/renewables/biomass-info/gasref.shtml
http://www.crest.org/renewables/biomass-info/
http://www.crest.org/renewables/biomass-info/carbon.shtml