FABER fluidized bed boiling gasification plant
The FABER (Fluidised Air Blown Experimental Gasification Reactor) plant enables to determine and vary the fundamental parameters of fluidized bed boiling gasification.
The FABER plant (Fluidized Air Blown Experimental Gasification Reactor) is a plant of Sotacarbo Pilot Platform, operational since 2018.
The plant, primarily designed for experimental purposes, is highly instrumented with pressure gauges, thermocouples and flow meters; the instrumentation in the plant allows to determine and vary fundamental parameters of fluidized bed boiling gasification such as the fluidization rate and the equivalence ratio. The table below summarizes some construction and operational details of the FABER plant.
- Nominal output 400 KWth
- Nominal biomass flow rate kg/h
- Reactor inner diameter mm
- Reactor height mm
- Maximum bed temperature 1000 °C
- Syngas temperature output 800 °C
- Syngas calorific power 4-5 MJ/kg
- Cold gas efficiency 75-80%
The functioning of the gasification reactor is based on fluidized bed boiling technology and is designed to operate with biomass but can also process other fuels such as waste and plastics.
The plant is essentially composed of three sections:
- The gasification reactor;
- The clean-up system;
- The electrical generator system.
The used fuel is supplied in a suitable size of less than 20 mm (a smaller characteristic size than the one used in the fixed bed reactor).
The heart of the plant is the fluidized bed boiling gasification reactor, which is capable of operating with air (possibly enriched with oxygen) and steam as gasifying agents.
The reactor allows solid fuel to be transformed into a gaseous fuel, syngas, by operating the reactions in a boiling bed made up of the gasifying agents assisted by olivine (which, in addition to ensuring the fluidization of the bed, acts as a catalyst by promoting the gasification reactions and reducing the amount of tar produced).
The gasifier has an internal diameter of 489 mm and a height of about 6 meters.
Thanks to its great versatility, the plant can operate both in gasification and pyrolysis conditions, with or without an external heat input; in fact, the reactor is equipped with six ceramic heating half-shells capable of raising the reactor temperature up to 800 °C.
The plant is equipped with a clean-up system capable of breaking down pollutants present in the gas stream such as dust and heavy hydrocarbons (compounds classified as tar).
Dust is collected by a cyclone operating at high temperatures while tar is broken down by a Venturi scrubber and a second scrubber filled with plastic (capable of improving tar condensation).
The clean-up section is also equipped with a cooling section to reduce the amount of water to be sent to the treatment plant.
As with the demonstration plant, the spent effluent is conveyed to a drain connected to the purification system (common to both plants).
The plant is operated from a control room where process parameters are monitored, and experimental tests are performed.
The composition of produced syngas is determined both through an analytical cabinet (for main compounds such as hydrogen, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, oxygen) and through a micro-gas chromatograph (for secondary compounds with lower concentrations, including ethane, propane, propylene, acetylene, benzene, toluene).