Page 221 - New Trends In Coal Conversion

Current status of coal gasification 183

7.2.1.1.7 Air Liquide GmbH/Lurgi Clean Coal Tech Co.
For several decades, Lurgi has been considered by many authors as the leader of coal
gasification process, the Sasol plant in South Africa being its most representative
example at commercial scale. The fluidized bed combustion boiler (FBCB TM ) gasifi-
cation technology was developed by Lurgi, now Air Liquide Global E&C Solutions,
more than 80 years ago, and it is based on a fixed bed dry bottom (FBDB TM ) gasifier to
gasify coal under pressure in the presence of HP steam and HP oxygen to produce a gas
suitable for a variety of applications (Arumugam et al., 2016).
China is also one of the main markets for the Lurgi gasification technology. In the
last years, several projects have been identified that feature the use of the Lurgi
FBDB TM gasifiers. The following are three of the most relevant ones (US-China
Energy Center and National Research Centre for Coal and Energy, 2014):
• The Lu’an Group installed and put into operation in 2008 a Lurgi gasifier in a poly-
generation facility that produces 160,000 tons per year liquid fuels plus 60 MWe
electricity.
• In 1987, the Tianji Coal Chemical Co. of Lucheng, Shanxi Province, started up a
facility that utilized five Mark IV Lurgi gasifiers to produce 300,000 tons per
year ammonia, 540,000 tons per year nitric acid, 200,000 tons per year ammonium
nitrate, and 900,000 tons per year of nitrophosphate. The facility has been in oper-
ation for 20 years.
• In 2000, Yima Coal Gasification of Yima City, Henan Province, began operation of
2 Mark IV gasifiers. The facility produces 80,000 tons per year of methanol.
Currently, the two main locations in China for SNG projects based on Lurgi gasi-
fication technology are Inner Mongolia province and Xinjiang province, where
updated news mention that two plants of SNG have been started up with a total capac-
ity of 2e7 billion cubic meters of natural gas per year: Datang Keqi phase 1 and Qing-
hua Yili phase 1 (Judas, 2014).

7.2.1.1.8 Envirotherm GmbH
The former British Gas/Lurgi (BGL), today co-ownership of Envirotherm GmbH and
ZEMAG Clean Energy Technology GmbH, developed the BGL slagging gasifier
based on the original Lurgi dry-ash gasifier, achieving higher temperatures (over
2000 C) at the bottom zone of the gasifier, which melts ash to slag, and other improve-

ments which are discussed by Hirschfelder (2014).
As of spring 2012, the following 12 BGL gasifiers were reported to have been or are
being constructed to operate in three projects (Hirschfelder, 2014):
• Hulumbeier, Inner Mongolia: The Yuntianhua United Commerce Co. Ltd, of Kunm-
ing, Yunnan, PRC, and the Hulunbeier New Gold Chemical Co. Ltd. of Hailaer,
Hulunbeier, Inner Mongolia, PRC, are sponsors of this project. The facility is
composed of three BGL gasifiers (two on line, one on standby), each 13 feet inner
diameter, operating at a pressure of 40 bar, to process 1250 tons per day of domestic
3
dried and briquetted lignite and produce 119,000 Nm /h of syngas. The syngas is the
feedstock for the production of 500,000 tons per year ammonia and 800,000 tons per
year urea. The installation of the entire plant was completed in 2011.