Overall warm syngas cleanup
EMSL Project ID
32704
Abstract
Gasification of biomass to syngas followed by catalytic synthesis of hydrocarbons or oxygenates provides a feasible strategy to meet the increasing demand for transportation fuels. This syngas has many impurities, including As, Be, Cd, Cl, Cr, Hg, K, N, Na, P, Pb, S, Sb, Se, V, Zn. Most of them need to be removed down to part per billion levels due to their strong interactions with synthesis catalysts. Although technical approaches exist for removal of these species, they are rather costly, employing solvents at ambient or lower temperature and backup sacrificial sorbents. The energy efficiency of the current process would be improved if all the contaminants can be removed at temperatures higher than the chemical synthesis reaction temperatures (greater than 200oC). In this project, an integrated overall warm syngas cleanup system will be developed, which can remove all the contaminants from warm biomass syngas and thus protect the down stream chemical synthesis catalysts. Five sub-systems will be separately developed which can remove (1) Na and K, (2) HCl, (3) bulk sulfur, (4) P and trace level sulfur, and (5) trace NH3. Then they will be integrated together for overall contaminants removal and with CO2 removal. This system will be able to remove all the catalysts poisons in warm biomass syngas to parts-per-billion levels and thus prevent the downstream synthesis catalysts from being deactivated. Such an integrated technology would be beneficial in both economic and technical terms when compared with the conventional wet-scrubbing/sacrificial sorbents process.
Project Details
Project type
Exploratory Research
Start Date
2008-12-23
End Date
2009-12-27
Status
Closed
Released Data Link
Team
Principal Investigator
Team Members