Shanghai university consortium continues to tackle key problems, and large-scale biomass gasification technology has completed industrial verification

China News Service, Shanghai, October 13 (Huali) East China University of Science and Technology announced on the 13th that the first domestic pressurized fixed-bed coupled entrained flow bed gasification industrial device with a single furnace annual processing capacity of 300,000 tons of biomass has been successfully commissioned. The device successfully produced methanol, and the device ran smoothly during the period.

The pressurized fixed-bed coupled airflow bed biomass gasification technology used in this device was jointly developed by East China University of Science and Technology, Saiding Engineering Co., Ltd. ("Siding"), a subsidiary of China National Chemical Corporation, and Zemak (Shanghai) Environmental Protection Energy Technology Co., Ltd. ("Zemak"). This technology combines the advantages of two gasification methods: it not only retains the characteristics of a fixed bed with good adaptability to biomass raw materials, but also has the high-efficiency cleaning advantages of an air-flow bed with "fast response and no tar production", fundamentally solving technical problems such as low biomass gasification efficiency and high tar content in syngas.

Panoramic view of biomass gasification green methanol plant. (Data map, courtesy of East China University of Science and Technology)

This feeding operation has opened up the entire chain from basic laboratory research to large-scale industrial application, opening up a new path for the high-value utilization of carbon-containing solid waste resources such as agricultural and forestry wastes, domestic wastes, etc., and is an important milestone in the industrialization development of my country's biomass chemical industry.

Our country's annual biomass resources (excluding livestock and poultry manure) are equivalent to approximately 580 million tons of standard coal. They are important energy and chemical raw materials and support the construction of future green energy and chemical systems. The core difficulty in producing green methanol from biomass lies in the gasification link. Biomass types are complex, the components are greatly different, the volume energy density is low, and the raw material characteristics are much more complex than coal. Directly using coal gasification technology is prone to various engineering problems, such as difficult tar disposal, large amounts of fly ash, and high pretreatment costs. The coupled gasification technology developed by Huali and relevant enterprises combines the advantages of two types of gasification processes and solves the above technical bottlenecks in a targeted manner.

Biomass raw materials have complex physical and chemical properties and are not as "homogenized" as coal, making the gasification process more challenging. How to use mature "coal refining" technology for "waste refining"? Behind this breakthrough is nearly 10 years of continuous research by the clean coal technology team of East China University of Science and Technology and cooperative enterprises.

In view of the difficulties and pain points in the biomass gasification process, academic leader Professor Wang Fuchen led the team to start brewing in 2017 and creatively proposed a biomass gasification process route of fixed bed coupled air flow bed. The core idea is to combine the advantages of the two gasification methods and learn from each other's strengths, so that difficult-to-process biomass can be efficiently converted. Once this technical route was proposed, it received strong support from China National Chemical Engineering Group Co., Ltd. and the Shanghai Science and Technology Commission, and received project funding. In 2024, it was included in the national key research and development plan project.

In 2021, the clean coal technology team teamed up with Saiding and Zemak to jointly build China's first 10,000-ton-per-year biomass gasification pilot plant in Tengzhou, Shandong. After many tests, various raw materials such as domestic waste, bamboo, and straw were burned, and finally broke through the key technical bottleneck of using "coal refining" technology for "refining waste" and opened up an effective way to high-value utilization of carbon-containing solid waste resources. Based on this, in 2024, Goldwind Technology Co., Ltd., a leading domestic wind energy company, gave priority to this biomass gasification technology in its biomass-to-green methanol project planned to be built in the Xing'an League Economic and Technological Development Zone in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

"Evaluating and comparing biomass gasification technologies requires systematic analysis from three dimensions: theoretical feasibility, engineering reliability, and good economics. More than 80 hours of stable operation have proven that this technology is feasible at both the theoretical and engineering levels, but there are still new engineering problems that need to be studied in depth and optimized through practice, so as to achieve 'stable, long-term, full and optimal' operation as soon as possible," said Professor Wang Fuchen.