DEVELOPMENT OF A NEW HIGHLY EFFICIENT AND FUEL FLEXIBLE MEDIUM-SCALE CHP TECHNOLOGY BASED ON FIXED-BED UPDRAFT BIOMASS GASIFICATION AND A SOFC

The H2020 project HiEff-BioPower aims at the development of a new, innovative, fuel flexible and highly efficient medium-scale biomass CHP technology. It consists of (i) a fuel-flexible fixed-bed updraft gasifier, a novel primary gas treatment zone placed downstream the gasifier for gas and tar reforming, (ii) a novel compact gas cleaning system for dust, HCl and S removal as well as fmal tar cracking within one process step, (iii) a solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) and (iv) a heat recovery system which supplies heat for internal heating purposes and for external utilisation. The technology shall distinguish itself by a wide fuel spectrum applicable (wood pellets, wood chips, short rotation coppice (SRC), selected agricultural fuels like agro-pellets, fruit stones/shells), high gross electric (40%) and overall (90%) efficiencies as well as equal-zero gaseous and PM emissions. During the first project year of the 4-year project the system design has been worked out and the interfaces between the different plant units have been defined. Based on preliminary experimental (partly lab-scale) work, process simulations and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations a first testing plant consisting of the gasifier, the gas cleaning unit and a slip-stream SOFC system has been developed and designed. The fuel flexible gasifier has been constructed and has already successfully been taken into operation. The remaining plant components are presently manufactured and the construction of the first testing plant is expected to be finalised in June 2018.