Beruflich Dokumente
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h i g h l i g h t s
Biomass fueled combined heat and power micro gas turbine system was developed.
Producer gas was derived from biomass using pressurized gasication process.
Pressurized producer gas combustion was simulated and tested experimentally.
Pressurized producer gas was used for micro gas turbine ring.
Two turbochargers with low speed generator were used as the micro gas turbine.
a r t i c l e i n f o
a b s t r a c t
Article history:
Received 28 January 2014
Accepted 12 April 2014
Available online 22 April 2014
A two-stage micro gas turbine (MGT) with low speed generator was developed to operate fully on
producer gas (PG) from a pressurized downdraft gasier without any auxiliary fossil fuel. It is an efcient
and environment friendly system for hot air production for any industrial drying process. For the Low
heating value PG combustion, a pressurized cyclone combustor (PCC) was designed and optimized using
computational uid dynamics simulation. The system was characterized experimentally with liqueed
petroleum gas (LPG) and PG fuels in dual-fuel mode and then with pressurized PG in single-fuel mode.
The system as a combined heat and power (CHP) has achieved an overall efciency of about 58% with
35 kWth hot air production as thermal output of the system.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords:
Biomass
Cyclone combustor
Low heating value gas
Downdraft gasier
Micro gas turbine
1. Introduction
Biomass such as agricultural and urban wastes is an important
type of renewable energy fuel sources especially in Malaysia with
agriculture as her main economy. For off-grid rural areas, diesel
generation sets were the most used methods for power generation.
However, price of diesel fuel and its transportation cost has to be
considered. Small scale biomass fueled internal combustion (IC)
engine power sets are becoming more popular due to availability of
biomass fuels. For these systems, biomass fuels are converted into
low HV gas fuel known as producer gas (PG) via gasication process. The gas is then cooled and cleaned to remove tar and particles
prior to be used in IC engines. One of the disadvantages of using IC
engines with biomass is the high maintenance cost of the cleaning
systems. Similar issue goes for gas turbine engines where the gas is
cooled and cleaned rst and then introduced into the turbine.
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 60 4 5937788; fax: 60 4 5941025.
E-mail addresses: mezainal@yahoo.com, mezainal@eng.usm.my,
lahijani@gmail.com (Z.A. Zainal).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2014.04.030
1359-4311/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
pooya.
62
Nomenclature
BIGCC
CFD
CHP
Cp
DG
ER
h
HV
HHV
HRU
IC
LHV
However, for medium and large scale axial gas turbines, a wide
range of studies have been conducted. Large scale CHP systems [6]
and biomass integrated gasier combined cycle (BIGCC) [7,8] are
attractive alternatives due to high thermal efciency, economical
competitiveness and low green house gas emissions. Also, the
possibility of co-ring biomass with other fossil fuels like coal or
natural gas into existing large scale power plants is an attractive
option to avoid modications to the turbine engines [9,10].
Combining biomass integrated gasication and combined cycle
(BIGCC) with other congurations like co-ring [11e13] or with
internal combustion engines [14] have also been investigated.
Cyclone gasier has been used for direct ring of PG. Cyclone
gasier uses biomass with size less than 600 mm, and has the
advantage of particle removal in the gasier itself [15,16]. However,
circulating uidized bed gasiers with tar cracking as well as
pressurized bubbling uidized bed gasiers with ceramic hot
cleaning units [17e19] are more commonly used in gas turbine
application.
The main concern in PG combustion is the relatively higher gas
ow associated with lower burning velocity and heat generation
compared to higher caloric value gas fuels. Thus, PG combustion
requires special design for the combustor to provide high air-gas
mixing quality with long residence time for complete combustion. There are numerous combustor designs for low HV gases. A
small scale three-stage axial ow atmospheric combustor with a
simulated PG was investigated [20]. Another combustor design has
been studied for low HV gas fuel powered turbine using multiple
radial ow inlets for air and fuel in a multi-chamber [21]. A similar
design with multiple air/fuel radial ow inlets but also equipped
with a pre-chamber tted with swirler vanes for better mixing has
been studied [22].
The other approach to PG fuel combustion is to modify existing
turbine combustors to be suitable for low HV fuel combustion.
Charles and Neilson [23] have studied the modications on a
commercial gas turbine (LM2500PH) for a 30 MW biomass cogeneration power facility.
Cyclone combustors have been studied in a wide range of designs
for coal combustion [24] and also co-ring coal with biomass [25]
because these combustors can handle high amounts of unburned
fuel and ash particles. The use of cyclone combustors for PG derived
from coal gasication process has been investigated as well [26].
Syred et al. [27,28] have investigated the use of cyclone gasier
with an atmospheric non-premixed cyclone combustor for PG
combustion. Another experimental study has been conducted [29]
to investigate a two-stage, rice husk atmospheric non-premixed
vortex combustor.
LPG
:
m
MGT
n
PCC
PDF
PG
ppm
RSM
T
TIT
DT
2. System description
A small-scale pressurized cyclone combustor (PCC), along with a
two-stage, turbocharger-based micro gas turbine system, was
designed and fabricated as shown in Fig. 1. The system is a standalone combined heat and power (CHP) unit for hot air production
that can be used for drying processes in small industries. The PCC is
designed for low HV gas combustion using PG fuel derived from
63
Fig. 1. The two-stage MGT-CHP system: 1 e gasier; 2 e cyclone separator; 3 e PG ow meter; 4 e PCC; 5 e MGT; 6 e HRU; 7 e electrical load; 8 e control panel; 9 e oil pump.
64
which signicantly reduces the amount of tar in the PG. The hot gas
cleaning unit consists of an insulated cyclone separator for particle
removal.
2.2. Pressurized cyclone combustor (PCC)
PCC is an insulated combustor with a tangential inlet at the
bottom for the air/fuel mixture and a tangential outlet at the top of
the combustor. It was fabricated using 3 mm mild steel sheet lined
with 100 mm thick refractory cement. The refractory cement at the
top of the PCC is 200 mm thick. In the non-premixed low HV gas
fuel combustion, cold air entering the combustor can quench the
ame and reduce the combustion temperature. However, air-fuel
premixing provides more stable combustion at the inlet of the
combustor and eliminates the requirement for a ame holder.
The PCC was designed and optimized using FLUENT 6 CFD
simulation program. The optimum design is to provide enough
residence time for complete combustion of airePG mixture of
0.05 kg/s and 20% ow rate and excess air respectively. The PG fuel
specications were based on earlier experiments by Zainal et al.
[35] for rubber wood gasication in a downdraft gasier with
higher heating value (HHV) of about 5 MJ/Nm3.
Simulation modeling was based on three-dimensional partially
premixed combustion model with low Reynolds stress model
(RSM), P1 radiation model and probability density function (PDF) to
dene the PG fuel and oxidizer species. For the inner refractory
cement walls of the chamber, emissivity was set to be 0.65 at high
temperature (about 1400 C) as reported in Omega literature data
base [36]. Tangential outlet of the PCC was found to be more suitable for turbine applications than axial outlet [37].
Different combustor diameters were compared from 10 cm to
25 cm with combustor heights of 50 cm and 60 cm for each
diameter. For complete combustion with low CO emission, the
optimum height and diameter of the combustor were 25 cm and
50 cm respectively. However, with higher ow rates, CO emission
can increase; therefore, additional removable height extensions of
10 cm and 20 cm were fabricated in order to cover wider range
of ow rates. More details about the PCC design was reported by Alattab and Zainal [37].
frictional losses; hence, only 0.9 kW was required to run the MGT
along with the generator at 3000 rev/min.
For the electrical power output, a 1 kWe electrical load station
that consists of 10 lamps of 100 W was used to vary the load on the
generator.
2.4. Heat recovery unit (HRU)
Thermal power output contributes signicantly to the turbine
systems overall output. High effectiveness shell and tube counterow heat exchanger was designed using the -NTU method to
recover about 86% of the MGT exhaust thermal power. Thermal
power was converted into 50 kWth of hot air that can be used for
industrial process such as drying. 100 annular counter ow tubes
per pass (two pass design) were used in order to minimize the
required surface area compared to the single shell design
commonly used in shell-tube heat exchangers.
3. Experiment setup and procedure
The discussion in this paper will concentrate mainly on MGT
system performance with pressurized PG in a single fuel mode. The
experimental rig consists of: pressurized downdraft gasier,
cyclone separator, PCC, two-stage MGT with low speed generator,
1kWe electrical load and HRU. System lay out for this rig is shown
earlier in Fig. 3.
Twelve type-K thermocouples of 5 mm thickness were installed
at different parts of the system as shown earlier in Fig. 3. A detailed
PCC drawing including thermocouple positions and build materials
are shown in Fig. 4. A 50LPM ow meter and 0.2 MPa pressure
gauge were used for ow and pressure measurement of LPG,
respectively. While a high temperature vortex ow meter and
0.1 MPa pressure gauge were used for PG ow rate and pressure
measurement, respectively. A hot-wire anemometer was used for
measuring the air ow rate. A pressure gauge (0.2 MPa) was placed
at the outlet of the MGT compressor in order to determine the
pressure inside the combustor. A pressure gauge (0.4 MPa) was
used to monitor the turbine lubrication oil pressure. Four differential pressure gauges of 0.01 MPa, 0.1 MPa, 0.05 MPa and 0.01 MPa
were used to determine the pressure drop across the PCC, rststage MGT, second-stage MGT and HRU respectively.
The MGT has two separate shafts for the rst and second stages;
therefore, the electrical generator could not be used as a startup
motor. Instead a 0.75 kW air blower was used for MGT startup
process. A spark plug was used as LPG fuel igniter, and then an air
blower was used to rotate the rst-stage shaft at a low speed for
about ve minutes for the MGT warm-up process. For two-stage
design, high back pressure caused by the second stage could not
gain enough speed for the compressor to build up the pressure and
draw more air for the combustion. This can result in a back-ame
out of the second stage turbine due to lack of oxygen in the
combustor. To solve this problem, a pneumatic bypass valve to
ambient was used to release the pressure after the rst-stage MGT
for startup process. When the air pressure at the compressor outlet
reached a pressure of about 0.04 MPa, the rst-stage turbine could
provide enough power for the compressor to sustain the speed, and
the startup blower valve can then be closed. The rst-stage MGT
pressure of 0.04 MPa was enough to cause a generator over speed.
Thus, some electrical load should always be applied to maintain
constant voltage in the range of 220 Ve240 V. Varying the electrical
output load could be achieved by changing the LPG ow rate or by
changing the PG pressure in the case of PG single-mode operation.
The air ow control valve at the compressor inlet played a major
role in turbine stability. Higher amount of excess air caused instability in the combustion with a temperature drop in the combustor
and turbine. On the other hand, reducing the air ow rate beyond
the fuel combustion stoichiometric condition would cause a ame
blowout.
4. System performance
Biomass fueled MGT system performance will be discussed according to the individual performance of each unit in the system,
followed by overall system performance.
4.1. Gasier performance
The downdraft gasier was characterized for different PG output
ow rates in the range of 50 m3/h to 200 m3/h for atmospheric
operation. The optimum output ow rate was found to be around
100 m3/h with average PG HHV and LHV of about 4.6 and 4.45 MJ/
m3, respectively, as shown in Fig. 5. Air/fuel equivalence ratio (ER) is
one of the most important variables to evaluate the performance of
gasiers, and it can be calculated from Equation (1):
ER
65
Air=FuelActual
Air=FuelStoichiometric
(1)
66
Table 1
Composition of ash and particles collected from the cyclone separator.
Component
100% ash
(wt%)
Cyclone particles
(wt%)
Na2O
MgO
Al2O3
SiO2
P2O5
SO3
Cl
K2O
CaO
TiO2
MnO
Fe2O3
NiO
CuO
ZnO
As2O3
Br
Rb2O
SrO
PbO
C
1.888
9.325
1.865
7.227
3.497
1.002
1.422
8.626
60.613
0.098
0.513
3.031
Trace
0.133
0.326
0.100
Trace
0.077
0.256
Trace
0
0.679
3.355
0.671
2.600
1.258
0.361
0.512
3.103
21.806
0.035
0.185
1.090
Trace
0.048
0.117
0.036
Trace
0.028
0.092
Trace
64.024
67
Fig. 7. Particle sizing for the collected particles in the cyclone separator.
Fig. 8. Temperature prole for the system at the gasier outlet, vortex ow meter,
compressor outlet and PCC inlet.
humidifying the airePG mixture. Both injectors were used with LPG
single fuel operation. However, only top injector was used in LPGe
PG dual fuel mode since the ame is more sensitive to the amount
of humidity in the presence of PG fuel. For the pressurized PG single
fuel operation, top injector was used just in case of high TIT as a
temperature controller only since the PG ame become less stable
with continuous water injection.
The amount of injected water also plays a major role in ame
stability. For PG operation, 0.5 mm injection nozzle was used with
water ow rate of 9 g/s to avoid ame quenching, whereas, 2 mm
injector (26 g/s) can cause LPG ame instability.
PCC combustion efciency with PG fuel was in the range of
85%e94% during the operation, and was calculated from Equation
(2):
hPCC
(2)
Enthalpy (h) used in the equation was calculated for the air/PG
mixture with A/F ratio of 4 since the PCC has a totally premixed
combustion.
Fig. 10 shows the system emissions with pressurized PG fuel.
Low CO emissions in the range of 0e15 ppm were measured
throughout the experiments. However, CO emissions elevation up
to 114 ppm was noticed during PG pressure reduction from 0.1 MPa
down to 0.05 MPa due to ame uctuation. On the other hand, NOx
emissions were high at elevated temperatures reaching up to
300 ppm since water injection was not employed during these tests
to cool down the combustor.
Fig. 9. Temperature prole inside the PCC for high pressure PG operation.
68
h1 st
stage MGT
h2 nd
stage MGT
_ p DT
Compressor power m$C
(3)
For the rst and second stage turbine power calculations, temperature difference was not used due to higher measuring error
caused by temperature drop in the turbine air-fan cooled casing.
Instead, high sensitivity differential pressure gauges were used to
measure pressure drop through the turbine. Equation (4) is used to
calculate turbine power:
_ Dh
Turbine power m$
(4)
Fig. 11. 1st stage MGT power and efciency for PG operation.
69
Fig. 16. System efciency with and without the gasier and compression equipments.
pressures the ame become less stable and tends to blowout due to
high back pressure of the HRU. Thus, one-pass HRU was tested and
the ame was more stable with a drop in hot air temperature and
HRU efciency from 260 C to 200 C and 86%e75% respectively.
Fig. 13 shows the one-pass HRU power and efciency during a full
output power operation.
As mentioned earlier, the PG pressure has a signicant contribution to the output power. However, due to the gasier air blower
limitations, using two blowers in series doubles PG pressure, but PG
ow rate remains almost constant as with single blower. Thus, PG
specic fuel consumption (SFC) at high pressure is much lower than
low PG pressure operation. This is because fuel consumption at
high pressure is only slightly higher compared to lower PG pressure
but the output power is boosted by the effect of PG pressure. Fig. 14
shows SFC for the system thermal output (hot air production) as
well as for the total system output including electrical output. It can
be noticed from the plots that inclusion of electrical output does
not enhance the SFC signicantly. However, the electrical output is
only required to achieve a self sustaining unit without the
requirement for external power source for the operation.
The required A/F ratio for the current PG compositions to
complete combustion is about 1.03 at stoichiometric conditions.
Increasing PG pressure accelerates the rst-stage MGT compressor
to draw more air. Air inlet valve was kept partially open throughout
all the tests to avoid drawing excessive amounts of air that can
affect the combustion stability and drop TIT. Equivalence ratio (see
Equation (1)) increases with increase in PG pressure since the
increment in PG ow is less than air. The effect of PG operating
pressure on (ER) and system hot air production power is shown in
Fig. 15.
For large gas turbine power stations, gas fuel is usually provided
through high pressure pipe lines from gas compression stations for
mass production, whereas, for small scale systems, the cost of PG
Fig. 15. System hot air thermal power and operation equivalence ratio.
Equivalence ratio
Compressor power (kW)
1st stage turbine power (kW)
2nd stage turbine power (kW)
Electrical power output (kWe)
1st stage MGT efciency (%)
2nd stage MGT efciency (%)
SFC for thermal output (kg/kW h)
SFC for total output (kg/kW h)
System efciency (%)
System efciency with the gasier (%)
PG gauge pressure
0.5
0.8
1.0
0.09
0.09
0.26
0.17
0.06
5.60
6.00
0.11
0.10
2.69
2.58
0.13
0.25
0.31
0.19
0.00
2.17
4.77
0.04
0.04
1.61
1.30
0.85
0.42
0.54
0.28
0.13
5.41
4.79
0.04
0.04
2.19
1.78
70
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