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ISSN 1990-7931, Russian Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 2021, Vol. 15, No. 5, pp. 819–826. © Pleiades Publishing, Ltd., 2021.
Russian Text © The Author(s), 2021, published in Khimicheskaya Fizika, 2021, Vol. 40, No. 9, pp. 27–34.
Energy Efficiency of the Gasification of a Dense Layer
of Solid Fuels in the Filter Combustion Mode
V. M. Kislov
a,
*, M. V. Tsvetkov
a
, A. Yu. Zaichenko
a
, D. N. Podlesniy
a
, and E. A. Salgansky
a
a
Institute of Problems of Chemical Physics, Russian Academy of Sciences, Chernogolovka, Russia
*e-mail: vmkislov@icp.ac.ru
Received February 25, 2021; revised March 18, 2021; accepted March 22, 2021
Abstract—The energy efficiency of the gasification of various solid fuels in the filtration combustion mode is
evaluated. The modes of gasification of carbon and organic fuels with the moisture content of up to 70% and
ash content of up to 90% are considered. The efficiency of air gasification of low-moisture carbon fuels does
not exceed 70%; and of organic fuels, 85%. The efficiency of the air gasification of high-moisture fuels can
reach 85–90%. The addition of steam to the gaseous oxidizer increases the efficiency of the process. The effi-
ciency of steam-air the gasification of low-moisture low-ash carbon fuels reaches 85%. In the case of organic
fuels, the maximum efficiency of steam-air gasification is observed for fuels with an ash content of 20 to 40%.
For highly reactive fuels, the maximum efficiency is observed for ashless fuels. If the reactivity of the fuel is
low, the highest gasification efficiency will be for high ash fuels.
Keywords: filtration combustion, gasification, solid fuel, high ash fuel, high moisture fuel, efficiency
DOI: 10.1134/S1990793121050055
INTRODUCTION
Filtration combustion is one of the promising
methods for processing solid fuels. Studies of the fil-
tration combustion of various types of coal, peat,
wood, and some types of solid combustible waste have
shown that this mode has a wider range of fuels accept-
able for processing the ash and moisture content than
the other known methods [1–3]. This is achieved as a
result of the heat exchange between flows of solid and
gaseous substances moving towards each other relative
to the front of the chemical reaction [4, 5].
Depending on the thermophysical characteristics
of the flows of the solid and gas phases, various ther-
mal combustion modes can be realized [6, 7]. The
most efficient heat exchange occurs when the heat
capacities of the phases’ flows are equal; therefore, the
presence of a noticeable amount of mineral compo-
nents in the fuel is not always a disadvantage [8, 9].
During filtration combustion, due to the countercur-
rent flow of reagents, the oxidizer entering through
one of the ends of the reactor is heated during filtra-
tion through a layer of hot ash residue leaving the com-
bustion zone, and hot gaseous combustion products
transfer their heat to the original fuel entering through
the opposite end of the reactor [10, 11]. Thus, most of
the heat released in chemical reactions is not removed
from the reactor but concentrated in the combustion
zone. Due to the intensive heat recovery from the
combustion products to the initial reagents, the com-
bustion temperature can be significantly higher than
the calculated adiabatic temperature [12, 13].
It has been experimentally established that the effi-
ciency of processing a number of hardly combustible
materials with a low ash content, for example, viscous
hydrocarbon liquids, can be significantly increased by
mixing the initial fuel with a solid noncombustible
material [14, 15]. The energy parameters of gasifica-
tion obtained in this case have higher values than when
burning fuel with the addition of wood or peat [16, 17].
At the same time, the composition of products, tem-
perature, and combustion rate determined as a result
of experiments do not provide comprehensive infor-
mation on the nature of the process [18, 19]. For a cor-
rect comparison of filtration combustion with other
methods, it is also necessary to take into account the
energy efficiency of the process [20, 21]. The parame-
ter for such an assessment is the coefficient of perfor-
mance (COP) of the process [22]. However, the com-
parison of the COP values given in various works is
complicated by the fact that in its calculation the
boundaries of the power system under consideration
are set to a large extent arbitrarily [23, 24], and the
authors themselves decide which energy flows at the
input and output from the system should be taken into
account.
For example, when evaluating the COP of a gas-
ifier, is it important to decide whether the physical
heat of the gasification products entering the burner
should be considered useful? As an example, let us give
COMBUSTION, EXPLOSION,
AND SHOCK WAVES