Title:
High Pressure Solids Feeder
Author(s):
Craven, J.M., Swithenbank, J., Sharifi, V.N.
Document(s):
Paper
Poster
Abstract:
The cause of process downtime in biomass combustion and gasification plants is more often than not rooted with the feeding and handling systems. Where gasification at elevated pressure is concerned, problems with feeding are exacerbated due to the requirement of feeding a solid fuel across a pressure boundary while maintaining pressure. Further to this, current feeding systems, namely lock hoppers, are grossly inefficient at performing this task and decrease the overall efficiency of the process being fed to. The proposed feeding system, named the Hydraulic Lock Hopper (HLH) utilises water as an incompressible fluid to carry out the compression work required for feeding. This configuration requires no external pressurising gas (typically nitrogen, carbon dioxide or syngas) as is required by conventional lock hoppers, avoids syngas dilution and saves approximately 82% of the energy required by a conventional lock hopper. The hydraulic lock hopper has been operated at pressures as high as 25 barg and has demonstrated the feeding of commercially available wood pellets in two modes of operation.
Keywords:
biomass, efficiency, feeding systems, gasification
Topic:
R&D on Biomass Conversion Technologies for Heating, Electricity and Chemicals
Subtopic:
Gasification for power, CHP and polygeneration
Event:
21st European Biomass Conference and Exhibition
Session:
2CV.3.1
Pages:
753 - 758
ISBN:
978-88-89407-53-0
Paper DOI:
10.5071/21stEUBCE2013-2CV.3.1
Price:
FREE
