【Ten Years of Rapid Development in Chemical Engineering Equipment】1660–2019: The First Commercial Operation in China of a Thousand-Ton-Class Pressurized Circulating Fluidized Bed Gasification Unit
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Happy May Day 2024! Safety first. Let’s give praise and support to the achievements in China’s chemical engineering technology and equipment. **********************【Ten Years of Progress in Chemical Engineering Equipment】A continuously updated summary post – feel free to join the discussions: https://bbs.hcbbs.com/thread-3576046-1-1.html (Source: Haichuan Chemical Engineering Forum) ***************** China’s first thousand-ton-class pressurized circulating fluidized bed gasification unit enters commercial operation On December 4, 2019, China’s first thousand-ton-class circulating bed gasification unit, developed by the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was officially delivered to its user in Jinchang, Gansu Province. This marks the first time that clean and efficient circulating bed gasification technology has been applied in the ammonia synthesis industry, providing raw gas for such facilities. The widespread application of this technology will provide a brand new solution to the environmental challenges faced by the ammonia synthesis industry. Currently, nitrogen fertilizer manufacturers that use fixed-bed gasifiers to supply raw gas to ammonia synthesis plants account for 40% of China’s ammonia synthesis capacity. Due to severe pollution, the Ministry of Ecology and Environment has required that, in accordance with the environmental warning levels, 50% of the fixed-bed gasifiers used in the nitrogen fertilizer industry be shut down, or even all of them. Every winter is a period with a high incidence of environmental warnings, and the shutdown of many nitrogen fertilizer manufacturers creates a significant contradiction with the supply of fertilizers needed for agricultural planting in spring. It is reported that Gansu Jinhua Group’s 200,000 tons per year synthetic ammonia production line uses circulating bed pressurized gasifiers to generate the raw material gas, replacing the traditional fixed bed gasifiers. This approach eliminates any emissions of waste gas or wastewater, thereby completely overcoming the pollution problems associated with fixed bed gasifiers. Additionally, since it is possible to use locally available coal of poor quality that is difficult to gasify using traditional methods, the cost of coal usage is reduced by 30% to 50%, saving the company nearly 50 million yuan in costs (accounting for 15% of the company’s total production costs). Over the past three decades, the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has been dedicated to the clean and efficient utilization of coal. To address the issues associated with traditional coal gasification technologies, such as limited suitable coal types, high pollution levels, or high costs, it has developed the CGAS technology, which is clean, efficient, low-cost, and adaptable to a wide range of coal types. Since 2004, through pilot tests, medium-scale tests, industrial trials, and engineering demonstrations, a series of test platforms have been designed and built. By working directly in actual engineering environments, step by step, research on the underlying mechanisms, process development, breakthroughs in key technologies, and the creation of complete technical solutions were achieved. Technical demonstrations of the first circulating fluidized bed gasifiers of various grades were carried out in China; these systems have been widely used by leading enterprises in the non-ferrous metallurgy and ceramics industries. They have also entered the international market, being exported to countries along the \"Belt and Road\" initiative. To date, 70 sets of such technical products have been put into industrial use, generating an output value of 3.3 billion yuan; they enable the reduction of 2.6 million tons of wastewater containing tar and phenols each year. Given the significant contribution of this technology to serving the national economy, the research and development team was awarded the Chinese Academy of Sciences Award for Science and Technology for Development in 2019. The thousand-ton-class circulating bed pressurized gasification unit delivered this time is China’s first demonstration project for low-rank coal circulating bed pressurized gasification; it supplies raw gas to ammonia synthesis manufacturers under a contract energy management arrangement. This project is also a demonstration project under a key initiative aimed at the transfer and application of scientific and technological achievements by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
In 2013, Lansi Group increased its investment in technological innovation to drive the transformation and upgrading of the company; it established the Lansi Energy Equipment Engineering Research Institute. Fan Fei, who served as the director of this institute, began to focus on the field of low-cost, pollution-free circulating fluidized bed pressurized gasification technology. To gain an understanding of the technical details of this project and minimize corporate risks, Fan Fei organized a research team to conduct on-site visits and exchanges at several pilot production facilities of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as well as at major ammonia synthesis enterprises across the country. To ensure the early completion of the project, Fan Fei traveled back and forth between design institutes, pilot production bases, and the project construction site, taking personal charge of testing, research, development, evaluation, and project construction. As a major scientific research project in Gansu Province for 2017, this project uses ordinary low-grade coal from the northwest as raw material; the products produced will find wide applications in the production of synthetic ammonia feed gas and as industrial fuel gases. The circulating fluidized bed gasification technology makes the gasification process more environmentally friendly, significantly reducing the renovation and operating costs for small and medium-sized ammonia synthesis enterprises, thereby bringing substantial economic and social benefits. In April 2018, when the project was nearly ready for commissioning, a highly critical issue arose. The investment required for a thousand-ton-class circulating fluidized bed gasification plant is substantial, making it very difficult to manage the project; therefore, it was urgent to establish a company to carry out the commissioning process and operate the facility. With the support of the group and the research institute, Jinchang Gasification Technology Co., Ltd. was established under the leadership of Fan Fei. On November 6, 2019, the 1,000-ton per year circulating fluidized bed pressurized gasification demonstration project carried out by Lansi Jinhua successfully completed the entire process; it was connected to the semi-water gas system of the downstream users, and qualified liquid ammonia was produced successfully. This marked the replacement of traditional fixed-bed gas generation technology with circulating fluidized bed gasification technology. Lanshi Group, in collaboration with the Institute of Thermal Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, carried out experimental research on pressurized gasification. The group also adopted the EPC approach to develop this project and completed the pilot tests swiftly. The test results showed that all performance indicators were superior to those predicted by the theoretical designs. Additionally, this technology offers advantages such as lower investment requirements in equipment, lower demands on coal quality, and significantly lower costs per unit of gas produced compared to existing technologies both domestically and internationally; all its technical parameters are at an internationally advanced level. Fan Fei said that the implementation of this technology can not only facilitate the clean and efficient utilization of low-grade coal in China to produce high-quality clean gas, but also significantly improve the energy efficiency of the system, reduce water consumption and wastewater discharge, offering clear environmental benefits. This project will also reshape the approaches to producing gas, oil, and new chemical materials from coal, and it will play a significant role in promoting the adjustment of China’s energy structure and ensuring energy security. At the same time, this technology became the first industrial-scale project in which the gasification upgrade of small nitrogen fertilizer plants in China’s ammonia synthesis industry was successfully tested, marking its potential for wide-scale industrial application in areas such as the renovation of fixed-bed ammonia synthesis gas sources, large-scale industrial gas production, and industrial hydrogen production. Fan Fei said that once this project is put into commercial operation, it will improve the efficient utilization of low-quality coal as a whole, replace the fixed-bed reactors used by small nitrogen fertilizer manufacturers, reduce energy consumption associated with emissions, and enhance the efficiency of these enterprises. With coal inside the gasifier, it is necessary for them to keep making adjustments in order to achieve more efficient gasification, meet the required gasification standards, and produce more usable gas. In the future, the team will continue to gain experience through this project, with the aim of spreading this technology across the country.
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China’s first 1,000-ton circulating bed gasification unit, developed by the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, is powering China.
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019 First commercial operation in China of a thousand-ton-class pressurized circulating fluidized bed gasification system