Novel Clean Energy Technologies Utilizing High-Temperature High-Pressure Fluidized Bed Reactors

At RTI’s Energy Technology Division, we are developing cleaner energy solutions, a number of which utilize fluidized bed reactors (FBR) at their core.Today FBRs are recognized with numerous industrial applications. This rise is credited to their attributes of having better heat transfer and mass transfer, ability to operate continuously between different process environments, and potentially large commercial scale. RTI has been developing process-specific FBR units for a variety of technology applications including coal gasification, biomass conversion, CO2 capture and utilization, and syngas cleanup and conversion. In all these applications, we are designing reactor systems to handle high heats of reaction while balancing hydrodynamics and kinetics with minimal adverse side reactions. We have developed significant expertise in designing highly attrition-resistant particles while imparting chemical reactivity and scaled up the manufacturing up to 100 ton scales. The FBR process development has spanned from 1” FBR for initial screening to a 54” diameter transport reactor to handle 2 million SCFH of coal-derived syngas from a coal gasifier. This presentation will share our experience and expertise in designing, developing and implementing FBRs for various applications and the tools we have developed in helping us advance our technologies from lab-scale to near-commercial scale.