What gasifier should be used for coal-to-hydrogen production

Could you provide a detailed explanation of the design criteria?

To produce hydrogen, with hydrogen being the product, it is necessary to have as high a content of useful gases as possible in the gas mixture; thereafter, CO is converted into hydrogen through a conversion process. Among all coal gasification technologies, dry coal powder pressurized gasification has the highest content of useful gases, with this figure exceeding 90%. However, it also requires the highest investment and involves the most complex operation procedures. The dry coal powder gasification methods include the space furnace, Shell process, GSP process, Jinchong furnace, and Collin furnace. The effective gas yield is highest for water-coal slurry, followed by continuous fixed-bed reactors at atmospheric pressure and circulating fluidized bed reactors; the effective gas yield for water-coal slurry is >76%, and it can exceed 80% when high-quality coal is used. The value for continuous fixed-bed reactors at atmospheric pressure is similar, while that for circulating fluidized bed reactors is around 75%. At present, normal-pressure continuous fixed-bed systems are not favored by policy, while the gas production capacity of circulating fluidized bed systems cannot be increased much, with the volume of raw gas being only in the tens of thousands. And the pressure is relatively low. Water-coal slurry technology is mature and is now widely used. Its technical complexity is moderate; although the investment required is higher than that for fixed-bed and fluidized-bed systems, it is still much lower than that for dry coal powder. Currently, there are Texaco’s single-nozzle coal water slurry system, the multi-material system developed by the Northwest Research Institute, Guotuo Company’s four-nozzle coal water slurry system, and Tsinghua University’s Tsinghua furnace (now known as Jinhua furnace). The more popular types of coal water slurry systems these days are the four-nozzle system and the Aerospace furnace that uses dry coal powder

A few days ago, there was a post on the forum introducing Sinopec’s “Dongfang Furnace”.

We need your coal quality data! No type of gasification is perfect for everything! Hehe

The type of coal you have determines what gasification technology you can use. All that I have explained above is from the perspective of product requirements, and product requirements are just one of the many factors to consider when choosing a gasification technology.

It is recommended to consider the following aspects: 1. If hydrogen is the target product, the higher the effective gas content, the better. 2. Regarding the quality of your raw coal: if it does not have good slurry-forming properties and its ash fusion point is above 1350 degrees Celsius, then powder coal gasification is basically the only option left. 3. Whether the waste generated subsequently is easy to handle. 4. One’s own financial situation, including expenses for food, clothing, and other necessities.

Select the vaporization furnace based on the coal quality and the vaporization method