Alberto Pettinau

Energy and economic assessment of IGCC power plants integrated with DME synthesis processes

Abstract The combined production of dimethylether (DME) and electrical energy in Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plants is a very attractive option for exploiting the worlds huge coal reserves achieving high efficiency and low pollutant emissions, as well as for enhancing the flexibility and economic performance of coal gasification plants. Besides being used for power generation in combined cycle plants, the clean synthesis gas produced by coal gasification processes can also be used as raw material for producing hydrogen, methanol, DME, and other chemicals. In particular, recent studies show the growing interest of DME as a new clean fuel for diesel engines, gas turbines, fuel cells, and household uses. This article concerns an energy and economic assessment of two different IGCC power plants integrated with a once-through DME synthesis process. In particular, the study has been carried out by examining two different solutions for the gasification process: one based on a dry-fed and the other on a slurry-fed entrained-flow gasifier. The energy assessment has shown that the DME production in IGCC power plants leads to a DME/coal energy conversion of ∼31—32 per cent and an electrical/coal energy conversion of ∼22—25 per cent. Overall, the solution based on the dry-fed gasifier exhibits the best exergy performance (50.8 versus 52.7 per cent). Finally, the economic analysis reveals DME production costs (6—6.5

Dimethylether From Coal: Performance Assessment of IGCC Power Plants Integrated With DME Synthesis Processes

/GJ) comparable with other premium fuels such as natural gas, liquefied petroleum gases, and so on.

Power generation plants with carbon capture and storage: A techno-economic comparison between coal combustion and gasification technologies

It is well known that coal gasification plants allows to produce a clean synthesis gas which can be used as a fuel in IGCC power plants and as a raw material in order to produce hydrogen, methanol, dimethylether (DME) and other chemicals. Recent studies show the growing interest of DME as a new clean fuel for diesel engines, gas turbines, fuel cells and household uses. In this paper, a comparative performance analysis of two different IGCC power plants integrated with a DME synthesis process has been carried out. In particular two different coal gasification processes (a dry-feed and a slurry-feed entrained-flow gasifiers) and the advanced liquid phase DME (LPDME™) synthesis process have been considered. The analysis has been carried out in order to evaluate the influence of the operating parameters of the DME synthesis section (pressure and purge gas recycle ratio) on both DME production and net power output. The performance assessment has shown that, according to both gasification process and DME synthesis parameters, the produced DME accounts for about 40–46% of the coal chemical energy, whereas the net power output of the IGCC-DS plant accounts for about 13–19%. Moreover, the performance assessment also has shown that the IGCC-DS power plants based on the slurry-feed gasification processes lead to an higher DME production and a corresponding lower power output with respect to the solutions based on the dryfeed gasifiers.Copyright