Ikelic - Alliance Digital Repository

STATUS OF COAL PROJECTS (Underline denotes changes sinee June 1994)
COMMERCIAL AND R&D PROJECTS (Continued)
BHEL IGCC AND COAL - GASIFICATION PROJECT Bharat
Heavy Electricals Ltd (C-45)
BHEL's involvement in the development of coal gasification concerns the belter and wider utilization of high ash, low grade
Indian coals.
As a first step, BHEL has set up a 6.2 MWe Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plant with an in-house 150 ton
per day moving bed gasifier integrated to a 4 MWe gas turbine and a 2.2 MWe steam turbine combined cycle plant. The plant
was commissioned in 1986 and has been operated for more than 5,000 hours with the longest run of 30 days.
BHEL considers fluidized bed gasification as a long term prospective for IGCC for high ash coals. An 18 ton per day coal pilot
scale Process and Equipment Development Unit (PEDU) was commissioned in 1989 for performance evaluation. In the
PEDU, coal is gasified by a mixture of air and steam at around 1,173^K and a pressure of 1.013 MPa.
The PEDU has been operated for more than 2300 hours with the longest continuous run of 168 hours. Th process and subsys
tem has been stabilized. The PEDU has been modified to improve carbon conversion and cold gas efficiency by recycling of
cyclone ash and redesigning the distributor section of the gasifier for partial bum-up of bottom ash.
BHEL has taken up a project to retrofit a 150 ton per day fluidized bed gasifier to its existing
6.2 MWe IGCC plant in 1994.
An advanced pressurized fluidized bed gasification rig incorporating gravity feeding of coal and cyclone char and integrated
bed ash carbon burn-up system is in the final stage of erection.
Project Cost: Estimated $4 million for retrofitting fluidized bed gasifier.
- BOTTROP DIRECT COAL LIQUEFACTION PILOT PLANT PROJECT Ruhrkohle
AG, Veba Oel AG, Minister of
Economics, Small Business and Technology of the State of North-Rhine Westphalia, and Federal Minister of Research and Technol
ogy of Germany (C-60)
During operation of the pilot plant the process improvements and equipment components have been tested. The last improve
ment made being the operation of an integrated refining step in the liquefaction process. It worked successfully between late
1986 and the end of April 1987. Approximately 11,000 tons raffinate oil were produced from 20,000 tons of coal in more than
2,000 operating hours.
By
this new mode of operation, the oil yield is increased to 58 percent. The formation of hydrocarbon gases is as low as 19 per
cent. The specific coal throughput was raised up to 0.6 tons per cubic meter per hour. Furthermore high grade refined
products are produced instead of crude oil. The integrated refining step causes the nitrogen and oxygen content in the total
product oil to drop to approximately 100 ppm and the sulfur content to less than 10 ppm.
Besides an analytical testing program, the project involves upgrading of the coal-derived syncrude to marketable products such
as gasoline, diesel fuel, and light heating oil. The hydrogenation residues were gasified either in solid or in liquid form in the
Ruhrkohle/Ruhrchemie gasification plant at Oberhausen-Holten to produce syngas and hydrogen.
The development program of the Coal Oil Plant Bottrop was temporarily suspended in April 1987. Reconstruction work for a
bivalent coal/heavy oil process was finished at the end of 1987. The plant capacity is 9 tons/hour of coal or alternatively
24 tons/hour of heavy vacuum residual oil. The first "oil-in"
took place at the end of January 1988. Since then approximately
325,000 tons of heavy oil have been processed. A conversion rate over 90 percent and an oil yield of 85 percent have been
confirmed.
The project was subsidized by the Minister of Economics, Small Business and Technology of the State of North-Rhine
Westphalia and since mid-1984 by the Federal Minister of Research and Development of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Project Cost: DM830 million (by end-1987)
- BRITISH COAL LIQUID SOLVENT EXTRACTION PROJECT British
Economic Community, Ruhrkohle AG, Amoco,
Exxon (C-70)
Department of Trade and Industry, European
British Coal is operating a 2.5 tons per day pilot plant facility at its Point of Ayr site, near Holywell in North Wales utilizing its
Liquid Solvent Extraction Process, a two-stage system for the production of gasoline and diesel from coal. In the process, a
hot, coal-derived solvent is mixed with coal. The solvent extract is filtered to remove ash and carbon residue, followed by
hydrogenation to produce a syncrude boiling below 300 degrees C as a precursor for transport fuels and chemical feedstocks.
The process dries and pulverizes the coal, then slurries it with a hydrogen donor solvent. The coal slurry is pressurized and
heated, then fed to a digester that dissolves up to 95 percent of the coal. The digest is cooled, depressurized and filtered to
remove mineral matter and undissolved coal. A fraction of the solvent washes the filter cake to displace the coal extract solu-
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SYNTHETIC FUELS REPORT, JANUARY 1995