【Ten Years of Rapid Development in Chemical Engineering Equipment】2272-2025: The World’s Largest Single-Unit Demonstration Project for the Incineration and Disposal of Gasification Ash at 490,000 tons per year

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Give praise and encouragement to the achievements made in China’s chemical engineering technology and equipment; your participation in discussions is the greatest encouragement. **********************【Ten Years of Progress in Chemical Engineering Equipment】Continuous updates and summaries are available – feel free to join the discussions: https://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-3576046-1-1.html ***************** On March 28th, the 490,000 tons per year gasification ash and slag incineration facility, developed independently by the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, achieved 80 days of continuous and stable operation. This facility is currently the largest single-unit gasification ash incinerator in the world. The trial operation of this project marks new progress in the disposal of solid waste in the coal chemical industry. The successful application and further dissemination of this technology are expected to complete the \"last link\" in the coal circular economy, bringing economic and social benefits to enterprises and local communities. Coal gasification ash is a major type of industrial solid waste generated during the operation of coal gasification units. Previously, the project team had developed an efficient incineration technology for the char resulting from circulating fluidized bed gasification, which has been put into commercial use in places such as Gao’an in Jiangxi Province, addressing the challenge of large-scale, clean, and efficient incineration of ultra-low volatile carbon fuels with extremely fine particle sizes. Gas flow bed gasifiers are widely used in modern coal chemical industry. The gasification ash produced by them features high humidity, high ash content, extremely low volatile matter, and poor reactivity, making it more difficult to handle and thus increasing the need to address this issue. China’s fluidized-bed gasification units generate over 70 million tons of gasification ash and slag each year. Currently, these wastes are mainly disposed of through landfilling or stockpiling; there is insufficient effort to reduce their volume, recycle them, render them harmless, or utilize them on a large scale, which has become a key bottleneck restricting the sustainable development of the modern coal chemical industry. The project is located in Shihezi City, Xinjiang, and is equipped with 4 sets of gasification furnaces for water-coal slurry to handle the gasification ash and slag generated there. The processing capacity is 490,000 tons per year, while 1.3 million tons of steam are produced annually for use in the operations within the industrial park. The treated ash and slag are then utilized as raw materials in cement production. To address the challenge of recycling ash and slag from gasifier beds, the project team developed a series of key technologies for the cyclic fluidized bed combustion of such ash and slag, based on the basic principles of cyclic fluidized bed combustion as well as research findings on the combustion mechanisms of gasifier ash and slag. These technologies were tested on a pilot scale of 1,000 tons per year. Test results show that this technology enables the efficient and clean combustion of various gas-flow bed gasification ash residues without the need for additional fuel; third-party tests conducted by authoritative institutions indicate that the combustion efficiency of these ash residues is 99.36%. Based on the results of the pilot studies, the project team designed and constructed the first gasification ash and slag circulating fluidized bed incinerator. The project was undertaken under EPC contract by Hefei Science & Technology Gasification Co., Ltd.; construction began in May 2023, the hydrostatic testing was completed in June 2024, and the incinerator started trial operation in January 2025. The relevant research work was supported by the Class A strategic pilot science and technology project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, titled “Key Technologies and Demonstrations for the Resourceful Utilization of Gasification Ash and Slag in Clean Coal Combustion and Low-Carbon Utilization”.