(85c) The Advanced Scale up Reactor Experiment (ASURE) Facility: A Testbed for Demonstration of Advances in Biomass and Waste Co-Gasification Systems.

The Advanced Scale Up Reactor Experiment (ASURE) facility factors heavily in the National Energy Technology Laboratory’s (NETL) Gasification Multi-Year Research Plan (MYRP) to support the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management’s (FECM) stated goals to “advance and demonstrate modular biomass and waste gasification systems for carbon-neutral hydrogen production through cost reduction, co-gasification, and process intensification”.

The ASURE reactor will provide a pilot scale fuel-flexible testbed for advancing the TRL of emerging technologies for co-gasification of carbonaceous feedstocks (including biomass, plastics, and other waste materials), catalytic production of hydrogen and other high value chemicals, ash and syngas tar cleanup, testing of refractory for use with high-alkali feeds, and generation of high-fidelity experimental data that can be used for computational model verification and validation.

The discussion presented in this paper details how the ASURE reactor will support FECM’s stated goals for gasification-related research, as well as the design requirements that will lead into the planned conversion of the existing chemical looping reactor (CLR) unit located at NETL’s Morgantown, WV site into a circulating fluidized bed (CFB) gasifier capable of operating at temperatures and pressures up to 1000°C and 11 bar, respectively. Additional discussion detailing the potential for external collaboration and use of the ASURE reactor for pilot scale testing of developing gasification related technologies will be included.