Proceedings of the17th International (ASME) Conference on Fluidized Bed Combustion

Proceedings
May 18-21, 2003, of FBC2003
Jacksonville, Florida
17TH International Fluidized Bed Combustion Conference
May 18-21, 2003, Jacksonville, Florida USA

FBC2003-169
Paper No 169

A SIMULATION STUDY FOR FLUIDIZED BED COMBUSTION OF PETROLEUM COKE WITH CO2
CAPTURE

Jinsheng Wang Edward J. Anthony

CANMET Energy Technology Center, Natural Resources CANMET Energy Technology Center, Natural Resources
Canada; 1 Haanel Drive, Ottawa ON, K1A 1M1 Canada; 1 Haanel Drive, Ottawa ON, K1A 1M1

J. Carlos Abanades
Dep. Energy and Environment, Instituto
de Carboquímica (CSIC) Miguel Luesma
4, 50015 Zaragoza (Spain)

ABSTRACT owing to the increasing demand for heavy oil processing,

Petroleum coke is regarded as a difficult fuel
because of its high sulphur content and low volatile
content. However, its low price and increased
production, means that there is a powerful economic
stimulus to use it for power generation. In this work, a
process simulation has been performed as part of a
feasibility study on the utilization of petroleum coke for
power generation with low-cost CO2 capture. The
proposed system employs a pressurized fluidized bed
combustor and a calciner. In the combustor itself, the
petroleum coke is burned and most of the CO2
generated is captured by a CaO sorbent under
pressurized condition to form CaCO3. The CaCO3 is
transported into the calciner where limited proportion of
the petroleum coke is burned with pure O2, and calcines
the spent sorbent back into CaO and CO2. A nearly pure
CO2 stream is obtained from the calciner for subsequent
disposal or utilization. The predicted overall efficiency of
the combustion is near 40 %. The proposed system
would also be suitable for firing other high carbon and
low ash fuel, such as anthracite.
Keywords: petroleum coke, fluidized bed
combustion, process simulation CO2 capture, CaO
sorbent
INTRODUCTION
Petroleum coke is a byproduct of the oil refining
industry. As a fuel it has undesirable properties, such as
high sulfur contet and low volatile content. However,
the production of high sulfur petroleum coke is
increasing. This high availability and the low price of
petroleum coke make its combustion increasingly
attractive.
An environmental problem associated with burning
petroleum coke is high CO2 emission. Due to its high
carbon content, a relatively large quantity of CO2 is
generated with this fuel. To meet future environmental
regulations, CO2 recovery may well become essential to
petroleum-coke burning processes. Moreover, sulfur
emission control for petroleum-coke combustion is also
challenging because of the high sulfur content of this
fuel.
A CO2 recovery scheme has been proposed for
fluidized bed combustion, which would also remove SO2
[1]. In this study we discuss combustion of petroleum
coke incorporating this scheme for in situ CO2 recovery
and sulfur removal. Attempts are made to take
advantage of the fuel properties and to achieve high
combustion efficiency with minimal emissions and the
results of process simulations designed to achieve these
goals are presented.
PROPOSED PROCESS AND SIMULATION RESULTS
The proposed process design is comprised of two
major units, a pressurized fluidized bed combustor and
carbonator (PFBCC) and a calciner, as shown in Figure
1. The composition of the studied petroleum coke is
given in Table 1. CaO sorbent is fed to the combustor to

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 chemically absorb CO2 and SO2 via the following and enters the calciner for regeneration and CO2
reactions: recovery, via the reaction

CaO + CO2 = CaCO3 + heat (1) CaCO3 + heat = CaO + CO2 (3)

CaO + SO2 +1/2O2 = CaSO4 (2) A smaller amount of petroleum coke is burned in the
calciner to provide the required heat. Pure oxygen rather
As can be seen from the equations, the pressurized than air is used here as the oxidant. Because of the high
condition in the combustor enhances absorption carbon content of the petroleum coke, the combustion
product from the calciner is nearly pure CO2, which joints
the CO2 from the calcined CaCO3 for subsequent
utilization or disposal. The heat released by the fuel
used in the calciner for decomposing the CaCO3 is
Flue gas recovered in the fluidized bed combustor by the
exothermic reaction given by eq.(1). The overall
(theoretical) thermal effect at steady state is similar to
Separation that of firing the the same total amount of petroleum
coke in the fluidized bed combustor, except that the CO2
Flue gas + CO2 exiting the calciner carries away more sensible heat
CaCO3
CaCO3 solid because of its higher temperature. However, with the
PFBCC-calcination configuration, most of the CO2 is
separated from the flue gas [1]. A disadvantage of the
process is that in the calciner, an amount of pure
oxygen, albeit a relatively small amount, is consumed in
PFBCC Calciner oxidizing the sulfur in the petroleum coke feed, prior to
CaSO4 formation.
The process simulation has been carried out with the
software package Aspen Plus [2]. The flow diagram of
the simulation is shown in Figure 2. Operation
CaO temperature and pressure for the fluidized bed
Air O2 combustor are 850°C and 20 bar, respectively. The
calciner is assumed to be adiabatic and the total
pressure is 20 bar. CaCO3 decomposes at 1150°C, and
the solid product of the calciner is CaO and CaSO4. An
amount of fresh CaCO3 is added to compensate for the
CaO loss due to CaSO4 formation and decay of sorbent
activity [1]. Two gas turbines are used to recover the
Petroleum coke compression work of pressurizing the fuel and oxidant.
The sensible heat of the high temperature flue gases are
used to preheat the fuel and oxidant through heat
Figure 1. Illustration of the proposed petroleum-coke exchangers. Including the power consumption for
burning process with in-situ CO2 separation producing pure oxygen for the calciner, the efficiency of
the process is predicted to be above 40%, as shown in
Table 2.
efficiencies for both CO2 and SO2. The solid sorbent is It is interesting to note that for this PFBCC -
subsequently separated from the flue gas by a cyclone calcination process, firing petroleum coke would be more
efficient than firing natural gas. Process simulation has
Table 1. Properties of the petroleum coke used in the been performed for the natural gas firing case (flow
process simulation diagram not shown). Here natural gas is taken as pure
methane, and a certain amount of the methane is burned
Ultimate analysis (%w) in the calciner with pure oxygen to provide the heat for
CaCO3 decomposition. A comparison shows that the
C 83 predicted efficiency for firing petroleum coke is 1.3%
H 5 higher than the efficiency for firing natural gas, which
S 4 can be attributed to the smaller amount of compression
O 3 work for pressurizing the fuel in the case of petroleum
H2O 5 coke, and higher efficiency of heat recovery from the flue
Ash 0 gases, owing to the higher heat capacity of the solid fuel,
which enables absorption of more heat. More
LHV(MJ/kg) 32 importantly, in the case of natural gas, the gas product
from the calciner contains more H2O. This also suggests

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 that it is advantageous to use petroleum coke for the gas product is recovered from the heat exchanger. The
calcination. saving related to lower calciner temperature is in the
The low ash content of petroleum coke reduces the reduced consumption of pure O2, which has to be
heat loss associated with high temperature ash and also produced by air separation. On the other hand, because
contributes to the high overall efficiency. Burning more fuel is diverted to the combustor, more air is
petroleum coke in this step also reduces any required for the combustion. This results in additional
requirement for fuel ash disposal, since petroleum coke compression work for air and more heat taken away by
is an inherently low ash fuel. the inert N2. As a result, the ideal efficiency may not
necessarily be enhanced, as can be seen from the
AN ALTERATION FOR EFFICIENCY IMPROVEMENT simulation results shown in Table 3. However, in reality
A modification of the calcination conditions can be adiabatic calciner can not be achieved. Lowering
made to improve the overall efficiency. If the calciner is calcination temperature would reduce inevitable heat
operated at ambient pressure, the temperature of the loss in the calciner and the heat loss during material
calciner can be lowered to about 900ºC and thus the transport. Moreover, lower calciner temperature is
required amount of fuel for CO2 recovery can be favorable to the CaO sorbent that has only been tested
reduced. It should be noted that the ideal thermal up to 1060°C [1]. In consequence, the overall efficiency
efficiency does not change significantly with the should be enhanced. Although the CaO stream from the
operation temperature of the calciner under assumed calciner is pressurized in order to allow it to be fed to the
adiabatic condition, because the additional sensible heat combustor, the theoretical work for the pressurization is
of CaO, owing to higher calciner temperature is released negligible. To avoid the loss of heat during transport and
in the combustor, and the additional sensible heat of the pressurization of the hot CaO stream, the particles may
gas product is recovered from the heat exchanger. The be mixed with the fuel for the PFBCC immediately after

315
1

EXHAUST1

Q
QDECOMP1

850
25 NETHEAT1
20
AIRCOMPR AIRIN 1
850
CYCLONE FLUE1OUT
DECMPOSE 20
COMBUST
25
FLUE1IN TURBINE1
1
Q=37112527.89 W=109796344.00 Q=-828573719.83
1150 W=-136507543.00
COALIN 517
456 20
850 435
25 20
AIROUT 20 20
20 SOLIDS2 20
474 CAO1
EXCHNGR4
HOTAIR 20 COAL1
SLDREJCT
COALOUT
249 850 25
1 1150 SOLIDS1 20 20
CAO2 20 Q=26167424.11
475 517
EXCHNGR1 HOTGAS1 HOTGAS3 1 434
COALSPLT 20 CACO3ADD
20
518
TURBINE2
Q=15734173.44 COAL2
1 O2COMPR
248 CACO3HOT
W=10991115.10
HOTCOAL1 437 1150
20 EXCHNGR3 W=-60933911.70
HOTGAS2 20 20
Q=4962973.93
EXCHNGR2
O2OUT FLUEGAS2
517
Q=0.00
680
20 25 CALCINER
Q=19602903.98 1
O2IN 1
HOTCOAL2
EXHAUST2

Temperature (C)

Pressure (bar)

Q Duty (Watt)

W Power(Watt)

Figure 2. Flow diagram for process simulation of petroleum-coke burning using Aspen Plus. The DECMPOSE unit is
assumed to decompose the coke to gaseous components. The decomposition heat is subtracted from the heat of the
subsequent combustion. The SOLID2 flow simulates discharged CaO, CaCO3 and CaSO4, which preheat the fresh
CaCO3 flow added to the calciner.

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 Table 2. Summary for simulation results Table 3. Simulation results for the scheme with
atmospheric pressure calciner
Heat Input, MW 1,000
Fuel LHV, MJ/kg 32 Heat Input, MW 1,000
Coal feed rate, kg/s 31.25 Fuel LHV, MJ/kg 32
Limestone feed rate, kg/s 64.84 Coal feed rate, kg/s 31.25
Limestone feed rate, kg/s 64.84
Power Consumers: MW
Air compressor 109.8 Power Consumers: MW
O2 compressor 10.99 Air compressor 117.2
Total power consumption 120.8 O2 compressor 0
Total power consumption 117.2
Power Producers
Turbine 1 136.51 Power Producers
Turbine 2 60.93 Turbine 1 145.39
Total power production 197.44 Turbine 2 0
Total power production 145.39
Heat generated, MW 790.19
Power generation from the heat (η=0.46) 363.49 Heat generated, MW 846.43
Power generation from the heat (η=0.46) 389.36
Net power generation 440.14
Efficiency, %LHV 44.0 Net power generation 417.54
Efficiency, %LHV 41.8
Pure O2 requirement, kg/s 27.44
Power for O2 production (1.224MJ/kg) 33.59 Pure O2 requirement, kg/s 22.91
Net power generation with O2 production 406.6 Power for O2 production (1.224MJ/kg) 28.04
Efficiency including O2 production, %LHV 40.7 Net power generation with O2 production 389.5
Efficiency including O2 production, %LHV 39.0

exiting the calciner. With this scheme, only one lock

hopper would be needed to feed the coke and the CaO
sorbent. A negative aspect of this modification is that the
CO2 stream exiting the calciner will be at atmospheric
pressure rather than high pressure. The overall benefit
from lowering the calcination temperature would depend
on the particular requirement for the state of the CO2
stream.
From the above discussion it can be seen that the
proposed process would also be suitable for any other
high carbon and low ash content fuels, from the viewpoint
of combustion efficiency and CO2 recovery. It should be
noted that treatment of other impurities, particularly
hazardous metal components have not been studied for
this process. However, available technologies for treating
such impurities could be incorporated and petroleum coke
has the advantage of containing negligible amount of Hg.
The proposed system is intended for power plants.
However, the calcination scheme may also find other
applications where CO2 stream with low impurity content
is desired. For instance, the calcination scheme may be
used in cement industry to enable recovery of CO2.
It should be noted that the flue gas from the PFBCC
contains certain amount of CO2. To further reduce CO2
emission, co-firing biomass could be considered. If we
take the common assumption that biomass is CO2
neutral, in which case near zero emission of CO2 may be
achieved with this process and this will be described in
more detail in subsequent papers.
CONCLUSION
The proposed process for firing petroleum coke looks
promising, as it appears to offer high cycle efficiency.
Including CO2 separation and the cost of O2 production
for the calcination, efficiencies near 40% are predicted. If
this process is realized, efficient combustion of an
otherwise environmentally polluting fuel can be achieved
with low or near zero CO2 emission. The economic and
environmental benefit of such a process promises to be
remarkable, while using technology (dual fluid beds and
pressurized FBC) which currently exists at a full
commercial scale means that the goal may be achieved
in the near future with relatively low commercial risk..
REFERENCES
[1] J. Carlos Abanades, D. Alvarez, E.J. Anthony, and D.
Lu,“In-situ Capture of CO2 in a Fluidized Bed
Combustor”, Proceedings of 17th FBC (Paper 10).
[2] www.aspentech.com.

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