Bruce C. Folkedahl

Water Extraction from Coal-Fired Power Plant Flue Gas

The overall objective of this program was to develop a liquid disiccant-based flue gas dehydration process technology to reduce water consumption in coal-fired power plants. The specific objective of the program was to generate sufficient subscale test data and conceptual commercial power plant evaluations to assess process feasibility and merits for commercialization. Currently, coal-fired power plants require access to water sources outside the power plant for several aspects of their operation in addition to steam cycle condensation and process cooling needs. At the present time, there is no practiced method of extracting the usually abundant water found in the power plant stack gas. This project demonstrated the feasibility and merits of a liquid desiccant-based process that can efficiently and economically remove water vapor from the flue gas of fossil fuel-fired power plants to be recycled for in-plant use or exported for clean water conservation. After an extensive literature review, a survey of the available physical and chemical property information on desiccants in conjunction with a weighting scheme developed for this application, three desiccants were selected and tested in a bench-scale system at the Energy and Environmental Research Center (EERC). System performance at the bench scale aided in determining which desiccant was best suited for further evaluation. The results of the bench-scale tests along with further review of the available property data for each of the desiccants resulted in the selection of calcium chloride as the desiccant for testing at the pilot-scale level. Two weeks of testing utilizing natural gas in Test Series I and coal in Test Series II for production of flue gas was conducted with the liquid desiccant dehumidification system (LDDS) designed and built for this study. In general, it was found that the LDDS operated well and could be placed in an automode in which the process would operate with no operator intervention or adjustment. Water produced from this process should require little processing for use, depending on the end application. Test Series II water quality was not as good as that obtained in Test Series I; however, this was believed to be due to a system upset that contaminated the product water system during Test Series II. The amount of water that can be recovered from flue gas with the LDDS is a function of several variables, including desiccant temperature, L/G in the absorber, flash drum pressure, liquid-gas contact method, and desiccant concentration. Corrosion will be an issue with the use of calcium chloride as expected but can be largely mitigated through proper material selection. Integration of the LDDS with either low-grade waste heat and or ground-source heating and cooling can affect the parasitic power draw the LDDS will have on a power plant. Depending on the amount of water to be removed from the flue gas, the system can be designed with no parasitic power draw on the power plant other than pumping loads. This can be accomplished in one scenario by taking advantage of the heat of absorption and the heat of vaporization to provide the necessary temperature changes in the desiccant with the flue gas and precipitates that may form and how to handle them. These questions must be addressed in subsequent testing before scale-up of the process can be confidently completed.

Characteristics and Behavior of Inorganic Constituents

Publisher Summary This chapter explores the characteristics and behavior of inorganic constituents. The chemical composition and physical characteristics of inorganic components of the fuels fired have an influence in the combustion systems of the processes such as firing methods, tof coal inorganic components to ash particulate and vapor-phase species, transport to heat-transfer surfaces in utility boiler, wear and sticking, deposit growth and impact on heat transfer, blinding and plugging of selective catalytic reduction catalysts, and ash deposit removability. In the original coal, inorganic components are distributed in several forms, including organically associated inorganic elements; coal-bound, included minerals; and coal-free, excluded minerals. The types of inorganic components depend on the rank of the coal and the environment in which the coal was formed. Low-rank coals contain higher levels of organically associated cations. The primary mineral groups that are found in all coals consist of clay minerals, carbonates, sulfides, oxides, and quartz. The association of the inorganic components in the coal influences the interactions and transformations of those components during combustion. inorganic components in coals are referred to as mineral matter, minerals, inherent/extraneous ash, and other names by many individuals who work with and utilize coal. For the discussion in this chapter, the term inorganic constituents is used to describe all ash-forming constituents including both organically associated inorganic species and mineral grains.

Subtask 5.3 - Water and Energy Sustainability and Technology

The overall goal of this Energy & Environmental Research Center project was to evaluate water capture technologies in a carbon capture and sequestration system and perform a complete systems analysis of the process to determine potential water minimization opportunities within the entire system. To achieve that goal, a pilot-scale liquid desiccant dehumidification system (LDDS) was fabricated and tested in conjunction with a coal-fired combustion test furnace outfitted with CO{sub 2} mitigation technologies, including the options of oxy-fired operation and postcombustion CO{sub 2} capture using an amine scrubber. The process gas stream for these tests was a coal-derived flue gas that had undergone conventional pollutant control (particulates, SO{sub 2}) and CO{sub 2} capture with an amine-based scrubber. The water balance data from the pilot-scale tests show that the packed-bed absorber design was very effective at capturing moisture down to levels that approach equilibrium conditions.