LAPSE

These are Aspen Plus simulation files for a Biomass-Gas-and-Nuclear-To-Liquids chemical plant (a conceptional design), which uses the Copper-Chloride route for hydrogen production. This is a part of a larger work (see linked LAPSE record for pre-print and associated publication in Canadian J Chem Eng). Process sections and major units in this simulation include: Gasification, Integrated-Gasification-Methane-Reforming, Pre-Reforming, Water Gas Shift, Autothermal Reforming, Syngas Blending and Upgrading, Solid Oxide Fuel Cell power islands, Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis, Methanol Synthesis, Dimethyl Ether Synthesis, Heat Recovery and Steam Generation, CO2 Compression for Sequestration, Cooling Towers, and various auxiliary units for heat and pressure management. See the linked work for a detailed description of the model.

Six Aspen Plus simulation files for the conversion of petroleum coke and/or natural gas to liquid fuels (synthetic gasoline and diesel) are presented. The base simulation files were designed with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology with the corresponding plant without CCS.

The processes may include various technologies such as petcoke gasification, integrated gasification and autothermal natural gas reforming, gas cleaning, water gas shift reaction, MDEA based carbon capture, Claus process, FT synthesis, and other processing steps.

The six processes are: PSG_CCS (petcoke standalone gasification with CCS), PSG_No_CCS (petcoke standalone gasification without CCS), PG-INGR_CCS (petcoke gasification integrated natural gas reformer with CCS), PG-INGR_No_CCS (petcoke gasification integrated natural gas reformer without CCS), PG-ENGR_CCS (petcoke gasification external natural gas reformer with CCS), PG-ENGR_No_CCS (petcoke gasification external natural gas reformer with... [more]

We present a new two-level rolling horizon optimization framework applied to a zero-emissions coal-fueled solid-oxide fuel cell power plant with compressed air energy storage for peaking applications. Simulations are performed where the scaled hourly demand for the year 2014 from the Ontario, Canada market is met as closely as possible. It was found that the proposed two-level strategy, by slowly adjusting the SOFC stack power upstream of the storage section, can improve load-following performance by 86% compared to the single-level optimization method proposed previously. A performance analysis indicates that the proposed approach uses the available storage volume to almost its maximum potential, with little improvement possible without changing the system itself. Further improvement to load-following is possible by increasing storage volumes, but with diminishing returns. Using an economically-focused objective function can improve annual revenue generation by as much as 6.5%, but no... [more]

In this work, a distillation system is designed to purify dimethyl ether (DME) from its reaction by-products in the conversion of flare gas into a useful energy product. The distillation equipment has a size constraint for easy transportation, making process intensification the best strategy to efficiently separate the mixture. The process intensification distillation techniques explored include the dividing wall column (DWC) and a novel semicontinuous dividing wall column (S-DWC). The DWC and the S-DWC both purify DME to fuel grade purity along with producing high purity waste streams. An economic comparison is made between the two systems. The DWC is a cheaper method of producing DME however the purity of methanol, a reaction intermediate, is not as high as the S-DWC. Overall, this research shows that it is possible to purify DME and its reaction by-products in a 40-foot distillation column at a cost that is competitive with Diesel.

In this paper, several new processes are proposed which co-generate electricity and liquid fuels (such as diesel, gasoline, or dimethyl ether) from biomass, natural gas and heat from a high temperature gas-cooled reactor. This carbonless heat provides the required energy to drive an endothermic steam methane reforming process, which yields H2-rich syngas (H2/CO>6) with lower greenhouse gas emissions than traditional steam methane reforming processes. Since downstream Fischer-Tropsch, methanol, or dimethyl ether synthesis processes require an H2/CO ratio of around 2, biomass gasification is integrated into the process. Biomass-derived syngas is sufficiently H2-lean such that blending it with the steam methane reforming derived syngas yields a syngas of the appropriate H2/CO ratio of around 2. In a prior work, we also demonstrated that integrating carbonless heat with combined steam and CO2 reforming of methane is a promising option to produce a syngas with proper H2/CO ratio for Fischer... [more]