Design | EnergyNorthwest.com

SwRI to Design Flameless, Low-Emission Coal Combustion Pilot

August 17, 2019

San Antonio-based Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) said on Aug. 12 it will get $ 3 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), and another $ 760,658 from an assortment of industry giants to design a large-scale flameless pressurized oxy-fuel combustion pilot plant.

The announcement is a major boost for the promising, but yet unproven technology, that industry observers herald as a groundbreaking new approach to utility-scale power generation. As SwRI explained, “the process uses air that is stripped of other elements like argon and nitrogen until it is pure oxygen. It is then combined with a fuel, usually either coal or natural gas, into a stream of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and water inside a combustor. The fuel and oxygen chemically react, and the hot gas can be used to boil steam, which pushes a turbine that generates power.”

Among the benefits of pressurized oxy-fuel combustion is that it has the potential to substantially improve overall cycle efficiency. Because it uses oxygen-rich combustion, it could also generate pure CO₂ that can be easily captured and stored, or reused.…

Select Boiler Chemistry in the Design Phase of Project Life

September 2, 2018

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On many combined cycle projects, the major decisions about boiler chemistry are left until after the plant has been designed, equipment is procured, and construction is well underway. However, the best time to make these chemistry decisions is in the design phase of the project. That enables the engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contractor to design the plant that best fits the selected chemistry program (Figure 1).

1. Water treatment decisions. The EPC contractors should design the plant that best fits the users’ selected chemistry program. Courtesy: Colleen Scholl, HDR Inc.

Phosphate Versus Oxidizing, All-Volatile Treatment

For example, consider the selection of a phosphate program versus an oxidizing, all-volatile treatment (AVT-O) program. Of these two, the phosphate program requires more-responsive instrumentation and controls, because of the potential problems of phosphate carryover and hideout. If the EPC contractor has a priori knowledge that phosphates will be used, its engineers can specify highly responsive pH and phosphate instruments, and can ensure those instrument signals are transmitted to automated chemical-injection pumps that feed into multiple injection points (Figure 2).…

GE-Hitachi and Southern Nuclear to Pair on Fast Reactor Design Advancement

November 6, 2016

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GE-HItachi Nuclear Energy (GEH) and Southern Nuclear Energy will collaborate to study the development and licensing of GEH’s PRISM sodium-cooled fast reactor design.

Southern Nuclear Development, a subsidiary of Southern Co. company Southern Nuclear Operating Co. signed a memorandum of understanding to study the high-energy neutron reactor design, as well as to work together toward participating in future U.S. Department of Energy advanced reactor licensing projects.

The companies said in a joint press release on October 31 that the PRISM design has benefited from the operating experience of EBR-II. Developed under the U.S. Integral Fast Reactor (IFR) program, the EBR-II was a 62-MWe prototype that began operations in 1961 at a Argonne National Laboratory site in Idaho Falls, Idaho, and operated for more than 30 years. The prototype was used for testing materials and design concepts and later used to generate power for other site facilities.

The reactor was shut down in 1994. In mid-2015, crews completed work to entomb the reactor, removing and treating the last of the sodium coolant from the reactor’s nine heat exchangers.…