Joshua Stanislowski

Long-Term Demonstration of Hydrogen Production from Coal at Elevated Temperatures Year 6 - Activity 1.12 - Development of a National Center for Hydrogen Technology

The Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) has continued the work of the National Center for Hydrogen Technology (NCHT) Program Year 6 Task 1.12 project to expose hydrogen separation membranes to coal-derived syngas. In this follow-on project, the EERC has exposed two membranes to coal-derived syngas produced in the pilot-scale transport reactor development unit (TRDU). Western Research Institute (WRI), with funding from the State of Wyoming Clean Coal Technology Program and the North Dakota Industrial Commission, contracted with the EERC to conduct testing of WRI’s coal-upgrading/gasification technology for subbituminous and lignite coals in the EERC’s TRDU. This gasifier fires nominally 200–500 lb/hour of fuel and is the pilot-scale version of the full-scale gasifier currently being constructed in Kemper County, Mississippi. A slipstream of the syngas was used to demonstrate warm-gas cleanup and hydrogen separation using membrane technology. Two membranes were exposed to coal-derived syngas, and the impact of coal-derived impurities was evaluated. This report summarizes the performance of WRI’s patent-pending coalupgrading/gasification technology in the EERC’s TRDU and presents the results of the warm-gas cleanup and hydrogen separation tests. Overall, the WRI coal-upgrading/gasification technology was shown to produce a syngas significantly lower in CO2 content and significantly higher in CO content than syngas produced from the raw fuels. Warm-gas cleanup technologies were shown to be capable of reducing sulfur in the syngas to 1 ppm. Each of the membranes tested was able to produce at least 2 lb/day of hydrogen from coal-derived syngas.

Advanced Gasification Mercury/Trace Metal Control with Monolith Traps

Three potential additives for controlling mercury emissions from syngas at temperatures ranging from 350 to 500 F (177 to 260 C) were developed. Current efforts are being directed at increasing the effective working temperature for these sorbents and also being able to either eliminate any potential mercury desorption or trying to engineer a trace metal removal system that can utilize the observed desorption process to repeatedly regenerate the same sorbent monolith for extended use. Project results also indicate that one of these same sorbents can also successfully be utilized for arsenic removal. Capture of the hydrogen selenide in the passivated tubing at elevated temperatures has resulted in limited results on the effective control of hydrogen selenide with these current sorbents, although lower-temperature results are promising. Preliminary economic analysis suggests that these Corning monoliths potentially could be more cost-effective than the conventional cold-gas (presulfided activated carbon beds) technology currently being utilized. Recent Hg-loading results might suggest that the annualized costs might be as high as 2.5 times the cost of the conventional technology. However, this annualized cost does not take into account the significantly improved thermal efficiency of any plant utilizing the warm-gas monolith technology currently being developed.