Conceptual design report -- Gasification Product Improvement Facility (GPIF)

The problems heretofore with coal gasification and IGCC concepts have been their high cost and historical poor performance of fixed-bed gasifiers, particularly on caking coals. The Gasification Product Improvement Facility (GPIF) project is being developed to solve these problems through the development of a novel coal gasification invention which incorporates pyrolysis (carbonization) with gasification (fixed-bed). It employs a pyrolyzer (carbonizer) to avoid sticky coal agglomeration caused in the conventional process of gradually heating coal through the 400 F to 900 F range. In so doing, the coal is rapidly heated sufficiently such that the coal tar exists in gaseous form rather than as a liquid. Gaseous tars are then thermally cracked prior to the completion of the gasification process. During the subsequent endothermic gasification reactions, volatilized alkali can become chemically bound to aluminosilicates in (or added to) the ash. To reduce NH{sub 3} and HCN from fuel born nitrogen, steam injection is minimized, and residual nitrogen compounds are partially chemically reduced in the cracking stage in the upper gasifier region. Assuming testing confirms successful deployment of all these integrated processes, future IGCC applications will be much simplified, require significantly less mechanical components, and will likely achieve the $1,000/kWe commercialized system cost goal of the GPIF project. This report describes the process and its operation, design of the plant and equipment, site requirements, and the cost and schedule. 23 refs., 45 figs., 23 tabs.