CCC/232 ISBN 978-92-9029-552-5
February 2014
copyright © IEA Clean Coal Centre
Abstract
In recent years, the considerable increase in the price of crude oil and natural gas and concerns about
their security of supply focused attention on whether fuel for power production and feedstocks for the
chemical industry could be obtained from the gasification of coal. The need to reduce greenhouse gas
emissions has enhanced the prospects of power generation from Integrated Gasification Combined
Cycle (IGCC) plant. However, the higher capital costs and concerns about reliability and availability
of IGCC plant have limited their market penetration. The coal gasifier has been a significant source of
operational issues.
A thorough understanding of the processes occurring in a gasifier is essential both for addressing
existing causes of gasifier unavailability and improving designs for the future. Many complex
processes take place in a gasifier and developing models of gasifiers results in a greater insight into
these processes. Computational models in conjunction with plant data can be used to evaluate gasifier
operation, solve operational problems, probe new designs and provide performance data for
commercial scale-up.
This report has surveyed models which are currently available for modelling gasifiers. The report
contains a brief description of the three types of gasifiers which are most commonly used. The models
available for each type of gasifier are considered. Insight gained by modelling has advanced the
design of gasifiers and can improve gasifier performance. In some cases, the results have been
compared with plant data and it has been possible to choose model inputs to give reasonable fit with
the measured data. However, there are fewer examples where modelling has directly solved
operational problems.
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