During the first 18 months of the 3-years project, the work focused on the development of the single plant components, the design and manufacturing of a testing plant and on basic investigations regarding ash utilisation in fertiliser production.
In the first project phase the basic system design for the CBE4I technology has been defined and based on that the system design for the testing plant to be installed at project partner Polytechnik has been worked out. In general, the system consists of a crane-based fuel feeding and fuel quality assessment system, a fixed-bed updraft gasifier, a multi-stage zero emission gas burner with integrated three-way catalyst (TWC), a boiler, an economiser and a flue gas condenser with directly coupled heat pump. Moreover, up to 50% of the product gas can be extracted through a specially designed extraction tube from above the fuel bed of the gasifier which passes through the so-called gas conversion zone, which is the first stage of the multi-stage gas burner. There, the extracted product gas is heated up and undergoes thermal tar reforming followed by catalytic tar reforming by an appropriate tar reforming catalyst (TRC) placed in the extraction tube. As a result, an almost dust and tar free product gas shall be achieved for further utilization in industrial gas burners
Within the first project period the single plant units have been developed and pre-optimized by means of computer aided methods (e.g. CFD simulations of the gas burner and the product gas extraction). An appropriate heat pump has been developed and tested in stand-alone operation. Moreover, based on simulations and lab-reactor tests a suitable TRC and a TWC have been developed. Based on this technology development work, the testing plant (400 kW fuel power related to NCV) has been designed and constructed. At the end of project period 1, the implementation of the testing plant at partner Polytechnik had almost been completed. In addition to R&D on the main plant components also the overall control system has been developed and implemented at the testing plant.
Besides the work on plant technology development, comprehensive investigations regarding logistics chains for presently energetically not used Southern European wood residues have been performed. Moreover, tests regarding the utilisation of the ashes gained from the gasifier in fertiliser production have been performed as well as tests regarding the reduction of Cr (VI) contents in biomass ashes, which may cause problems in keeping respective limit values in fertiliser production.
Technology-related R&D has been accompanied by risk assessments and safety analyses, a market study regarding the CBE4I application in different industrial sectors, preliminary techno-economic analyses in order to check the economic viability of the new technology and to define cost targets for the single plant components as well as preliminary environmental and overall impact assessments. Moreover, work on the performance of an LCA has been initialized.
