Energy sources. Part A, Recovery utilization and environmental effects
Paginering:
Jaargang 2 (1975) nr. 1 pagina's 11-31
Jaar:
1975
Inhoud:
Coal gasification peaked in activity during the 1920s with a large number of U.S. plants making low-BTU gas by fixed-bed gas producers. In some cases, these plants prepared hot raw gas for firing open hearth furnaces and, in other cases, the gases were cooled, scrubbed, and desulfurized for various utility and industrial purposes. Efficient production of clean, low-BTU gas from coal was clearly demonstrated on an industrial scale. However, the technology was not advanced to a point which allowed this gas to later compete with low cost hydrocarbons. Improvement of producer performance could allow gas producers to have strong growth potential in modern economies. Two aspects which deserve attention from research and engineering are (1) capability of utilizing lowest cost coals and (2) capability of enlarging producer gasification capacities. Promising developments involve systems for integrating traveling-grate processes for pretreating and partially gasifying coal prior to subsequent gasification with new enlarged designs of gas producers. Specifically, these would concern a continuous process for conversion of coal to a pelletized and precoked structure for gas production by traveling grates or shaft furnaces of the dry ash or slagging ash species. The purpose of research in this area was to broaden the applications for gas producers to accept a wide variety of low cost fuels and to utilize some of the new processing developments which were recently perfected in the ferrous metallurgical fields. Modern iron ore agglomeration units process more than 12,000 tons per day of raw material into high temperature agglomerates and fuels conversion processes can benefit from the machinery and process innovations. Applications of these developments for the fuels conversion fields should enable production of low cost, clean energy from the so-called dirty solid fuels.
Tijdschrift beschrijving