Understanding the start-up- knowledge transfer from bed material testing at Chalmers to the operation of the gobigas gasification unit

Paper in proceedings, 2016

© 2016 ETA-Florence Renewable Energies. The operation of industrial sized plants is often based on experience and the operational window is usually narrow, around an optimum operational point. To get to that optimal point, the plant is designed for, it needs to go through a cumbersome start-up. In case of the 30MW gasification unit at the GoBiGas plant, one of the major hurdles during the commissioning of the plant was to control and limit the amount of tar produced from the gasifier. The high tar loads which clogged the raw gas cooler were preventing the standard operation to be attained, as olivine which is used as a bed material active towards tar decomposition had to undergo an in-situ activation. In principal two main activation mechanisms are considered, ash incorporation and structural changes due to heat treatment under red-ox conditions.