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Eastman Licenses Reduced Sulfur Start-Up Technology to Hydrogen Energy International
23 August 2008
Eastman Chemical Company will license its proprietary Reduced Sulfur Start-Up Technology to Hydrogen Energy International, the 50/50 joint venture between BP Alternative Energy and Rio Tinto established to develop industrial-scale, low-carbon hydrogen fuelled power generation. (Earlier post.)
This license agreement grants us access to technology which will minimize sulfur emissions during start-up of our first solid-fueled gasification facility with carbon-capture.
—Jonathan Briggs, regional director of Hydrogen Energy
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| The Eastman process uses a sulfur-free carbonaceous liquid feedstock for start-up. Click to enlarge. |
Conventionally, raw, sulfur-containing gas produced during the start-up of a gasification plant is flared until the downstream clean-up and recovery plants are started. While allowing for a controlled start-up, it results in excess levels of sulfur emissions.
Eastman’s process involves starting the gasification units and downstream plants on a sulfur-free, carbonaceous liquid feedstock such as propanol, methanol, or a mixture of methanol and water, resulting in a flare without sulfur emissions.
Once the downstream plants are adequately pressurized and brought on-line, the feed is switched over to coal slurry or other sulfur-bearing feedstock on the same feed injector. The changeover is accomplished while maintaining pressure, and without interruption to the feed.
Eastman has used the sulfur-free startup process at its Kingsport gasification facilities for more than 10 years. Terms of the HEI agreement was not disclosed.
Resources
US Patent No. 6,033,447: Start-up Process for a Gasification reactor
August 23, 2008 in Brief | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
Comments
Posted by: Henry Gibson | August 23, 2008 at 01:04 PM
This is not a huge technical improvement, but at least it will help get rid of some of the NIMBY objections.
Now if there was only a way to kill the sulfur emissions during an unplanned shutdown and system dump to the flare stack, they'd really have something.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | August 24, 2008 at 07:49 AM
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Revolutionary, absolutely stunning technology to produce massive amounts of renewable fuel.
No. This is similar to powerplants burning low sulphur coal to reduce sulphur emissions. Or locomotives in Britain being rquired to burn coke.
Converting coal to gas before generating electrity can have many advantages. One that was industrialized more than a century ago by the British industrialist Mond was that fertilizers can be extracted in quantity by coking the coal first. Other coal byproducts were long known such as solvents and gas. How many tons of fertizers are going up in smoke whilst much methane is converted into ammonia to make up for it.
Many valuable tons of coal tar products are destroyed in conventional power plants. Much coal tar could directly replace crude oil.
Gas produced from coal can be used in large and small piston engines as well as turbine engines. Electricity can be generated with higher efficiency.
Coal gasification can lead to an alternate gas supply so that cogeneration can be started and continued with the lowest possible fuel prices. CO2 production can be reduced by 40% with cogeneration. Fuel use efficiency can be doubled.
Converting the "coal gas" to methane might be initially required to use existing distribution systems. At some point hydrogen could be delivered in a separate system, but at the same pressure three times more gas than methane must be delivered, but hydrogen moves easier.
..HG..