Novel Coal-Steam Gasification with a Thermochemical Regenerative Process for Power Generation

In this paper, a novel high-efficiency coal gasification technology is proposed in which a regenerative unit is applied to recover syngas sensible heat to generate steam; then, the high-temperature steam is used to gasify coke from a pyrolyzer. Through such a thermochemical regenerative unit, the sensible heat with a lower energy level is upgraded into syngas chemical energy with a higher energy level; therefore, high cold gas efficiency (CGE) is expected from the proposed system. aspenplus software is selected to simulate the novel coal gasification system, and the key parameters are validated by experimentation. Then energy, exergy, and energy-utilization diagram (EUD) analyses are applied to disclose the plant performance enhancement mechanism. It is revealed that 83.2% of syngas sensible heat can be recovered into steam agent with the CGE upgraded to 90%. In addition, with the enhancement of CGE, the efficiency of an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) based on the novel gasification system can be as high as 51.82%, showing a significant improvement compared to 45.2% in the general electric company (GE) gasification-based plant. In the meantime, the irreversible destruction of the gasification procedure is reduced to 25.7% through thermochemical reactions. The increase in the accepted energy level (Aea) and the decreases in the released energy level (Aed) and heat absorption ("H) contribute to the reduction in exergy destruction in the gasification process. Additionally, since the oxygen agent is no longer used in the IGCC, 34.5 MW exergy destruction in the air separation unit (ASU) is avoided.