European Bio-Energy Projects

Figure 3: Pilot scale test rig.
CO-FGT
Objectives
The innovative Combined Flue Gas
Treatment (CO-FGT) will treat fumes
coming from a Utility Boiler firing coal and
waste and a Municipal Solid Waste
incineration, and aims at:
• contributing to the reduction of
emissions of dangerous substances, such
as heavy metals, SO2 , NOx, dioxin,
furans, HCl,
• using an innovative highly reactive
calcium-based sorbent, which will reduce
the amount of reagent needed to absorb
the air pollutants and hence reduce the
reagent costs,
• reducing the amount of secondary waste
coming from the FGT itself,
• reducing operative and installation costs
of the incineration plants.
A cost-effective flue
gas treatment
Challenges
The project aims to:
• decrease the overall CO2 emissions and reduce
the import dependency for solid fuels for the
EU by the introduction of solid municipal waste
as biomass in coal fired power plants,
• limit the drawbacks, such as flue gas
emissions, with the introduction of biomass in
co-combustion with solid fuels.
All of the existing flue gas treatment processes
(wet, dry or semi-dry) have advantages and
disadvantages but none of them can be standalone
processes. The new process can be
classified as a semi-dry process (spray-drier)
where an innovative calcium based sorbent will
be applied, leading to a strong decrease in
reactant consumption due to the increase of
sorbent particles reactivity.
Project structure
The CO-FGT project will benefit from the
experience of two flue gas manufacturers from
Italy and Germany, two lime producers from Italy
and Spain and one incinerator from Italy.
An experimental institute from Italy is the RTD
performer.
Expected impact and exploitation
The CO-FGT project will have a double impact for
EU social objectives. The first impact is due to
its own technological progress, and the second
is related to the contribution of such a project in
the development of alternative energy sources,
such as biomass.
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The SMEs of the consortium intend to exploit the
results, partially by selling licences to companies
in the flue gas treatment manufacturing field. The
result of this project will be disseminated to a
large number of incinerators upon whom
European Waste Management depends.
Progress to date
The bibliographic review, the data collection and
the successive statistical analysis have supplied
an overview of the European situation in terms
of technological distribution, which foresees the
possible impact of the penetration of the CO-FGT
technology in the European market.
The laboratory study was focused on the
optimisation of a laboratory scale spray-drier
reactor, which was able to reproduce on a smallscale
conditions of reaction similar to the ones
encountered in the flue gas stream coming from
an incineration plant. Many tests have been
performed varying the experimental conditions
in terms of temperature, moisture fraction,
residence time and atomisation conditions,
characterising the final properties of the sorbents
of different formulation. The surface area and
porosity of the collected samples, along with their
morphological aspect, have been used to
estimate the possible efficiency of each sorbent.
The evaluation of the preliminary results,
obtained in the laboratory scale tests, have
shown favourable and promising elements in
terms of the expected properties of the prepared
sorbent formulations. Some samples, having a