Fate of Sulfur, Chlorine, Alkali Metal, and Vanadium Species during High-Temperature Gasification of Canadian Tar Sand Products

Co-feed of alternative fuels, e.g., petcoke, gains increasing importance for energy conversion in not only Germany but also worldwide. An auspicious process for power generation is the integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC). Several volatile inorganic species are of concern in IGCC power systems, because they can cause erosion, corrosion, fouling, and slagging. The aim of this work was to obtain detailed information on the influence of fuel composition of the refinery product line tar sand, bitumen, and petcoke in comparison to the standard fuel hard coal on the release of sodium, potassium, chlorine, sulfur, and vanadium species during high-temperature gasification. In addition to the pure fuels, blends of hard coal and petcoke were gasified in lab-scale experiments in a helium/oxygen atmosphere at 1500 °C. The atmospheric conditions were in an entrained flow gasifier. Hot gas analysis was performed by molecular beam mass spectrometry. Species of interest were HCl, H2S, COS, SO2, NaCl, KCl, KOH, and V. A major finding is that the dilution effect cannot satisfactorily explain the release of the sulfur species under investigation for the fuel blends on one side but can explain the release of sodium and chlorine species on the other side.