Enhanced Gasification Reactor Designs for Maximizing Gas/Particle Interaction

Gasification is an endothermic chemical process that converts carbonaceous materials, such as coal, into syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Syngas can be used downstream to generate power or converted into higher value added products, such as transportation fuels. However, inefficiencies in current reactor technologies, such as slugging and bypassing, can limit conversion. Solving these inefficiencies by developing modular, innovative reactor geometries can improve the production of syngas from vast, domestic coal resources. During the Phase I effort, a modular, innovative reactor geometry that solves these inefficiencies will be designed and optimized through computational fluid dynamics simulations. A prototype of the optimized unique reactor geometry will be validated and compared to current gasification reactor designs through experimental evaluations. Finally, an economic analysis will be conducted to evaluate the cost of the increased efficiency of the innovative reactor design. Furthermore, the modularity of the design will enable syngas generation on multiple scales including on- site syngas and power generation applications. Ultimately, the development of this modular, unique reactor geometry that improves the conversion efficiency of gasification reactors will enable clean power generation from domestic resources.