A proposed scheme for coal fired combined cycle and its concise performance

For IGCC, the primary investment is too high due to the demand of high gasification efficiency. For PFBCC, the thermal efficiency is too low due to the relatively low turbine inlet temperature and the hot working medium of the gas turbine is not easy to clean. A new scheme is proposed for coal fired combined cycle to overcome the main drawbacks of IGCC and PFBCC. The research targets are developing a new cycle construction of coal fired combines cycle to raise the efficiency and reduce the primary investment. Actually, the new scheme is a synthesis of some existing proposals. It adopts partial gasification to reduce the primary investment of the gasification equipment. The un-gasified surplus solid is then feed to a pressurized fluidized bed boiler, but adopting Curtiss Wright type external combustion to lower the ash content in the working medium. The gas fuel from the partial gasifier is combusted in a top combustor to further increase the working medium temperature. An extremely concise performance estimation method for the new scheme and its equations is proposed in order to easily understand the basic physical meaning of the new system. Some typical calculations based on this concise method are given. Then, a more detailed computation is accomplished with Aspen Plus code. The basic feasibility of this scheme is proven to be favorable. The efficiency is higher than the existing coal fired IGCC plants. The advantage of the new scheme comes from the better utilization of coal energy. Almost all the energy of coal is first utilized in the top cycle, and then the bottom cycle, just like the gas fueled combined cycle does. The primary investment is lower than the ordinary IGCC due to the lack of air separation unit and the adoption of partial gasification. The ash content is much lower than that of the existing PFBCC plants. If no any harmful ash in working medium is required, the atmospheric fluidized bed can be applied rather than the pressurized fluidized bed. A similar proposal with atmospheric fluidized bed and its performance estimation are also given. However, its efficiency will be lower than the pressurized fluidized bed scheme.