--> Gasification of Heavy Oils to Produce Electricity and Hydrogen, by Gerardo Hiriart L. and Oscar Vera G.; #90062 (2007)

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Gasification of Heavy Oils to Produce Electricity and Hydrogen

Gerardo Hiriart L. and Oscar Vera G.
Instituto de Ingeniería UNAM, Torre de Ingeniería 6° piso, Ciudad Universitaria, Mexico DF

Gasification processes to convert almost any fuel into a syngas to be used to feed a gas turbine of a combined cycle generating power plant is well known, even though it is not yet a readily commercial technique. New developments in the production of oxygen for the gasification process and the simultaneous production of hydrogen, via a shift process, from the syngas stream can be a detonator for new improvement in cogeneration schemes.

In this article, using the thermodynamic characteristics of the Combined Cycle Plant of Valladolid in Yucatan, a theoretical study is performed for three different applications, using as primary fuel heavy oil converted into syngas by the well known techniques of gasification and Integrated Gasification with Combined Cycle (IGCC). The first is the heat and mass balance needed to find out the main equipments of the actual CC plant that need to be repowered (turbines, generators, heat recovery steam generator, etc.) if instead of natural gas, syngas is used. Second, a balance is made including a shift reactor to convert all the syngas into hydrogen and CO2. Part of the hydrogen is used to run the gas turbine and the rest is sent back to the refinery for other chemical processes, recovering the heat of the shift reaction to produce steam for the turbine. Special consideration is given to the air separating unit to find the power needed to produce the required oxygen for the gasifier and to the separated nitrogen that could be used for the fertilizer industry and, or, for secondary recovery of oil in fields like Cantarell. Third and final, a balance is presented for the CO2 that can be obtained, almost pure, from the exhaust of the shift reactor to be used as a gas for secondary recovery of oil and at the same time as a way to sequester CO2 and to contribute to the environment, even with the possibility of trading carbon bonuses.

A discussion is presented at the end of the poster about the possibilities of implementing a process like this with the Mexican heavy oils and the need to continue with more precise calculations and with some experimental work.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #90062©2006 AAPG Hedberg Research Conference, Veracruz, Mexico