Our test facilities were built to test various fuels, including different types of biomass, tires, municipal and paper sludge, carpet scraps, garbage and industrial plastics as well as coal, oil shale, semi-coke and other difficult fuels to optimize the boiler design.
Fluidized bed test facilities in Coeur d’Alene, USA
Metso Outotec owns and operates a 3.0 MBtu/hour (0.9 MW) (nominal HHV output) combustor and a 3.0 MBtu/hour (0.9 MW) (nominal HHV) gasifier pilot scale atmospheric, bubbling type fluidized bed system in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.
The combustion fluidized bed pilot unit contains 0.8m2 (9 ft2) of bed area and 7.9m (26 ft) of freeboard above the nozzles.
Seven sets of overfire air ports penetrate the refractory of the freeboard space, with each set housing eight individual ports. Each set of overfire air ports is individually controlled and may be used to inject atmospheric air, flue gas recirculation (FGR), and/or reagents for selective non-catalytic reduction (SNCR) NOX abatement.
For staged combustion studies, a refractory choke is installed to reduce the bed size to an area of 25-100mm x 25-100mm (1”-4” x 1”-4”). This “choked” (or reduced) bed allows for gasification modeling of the fuel within the bed and staged combustion in the vapor space.
Fluidized bed test facilities in Frankfurt, Germany
In experimental R&D we can perform tests with your feed materials to demonstrate the performance of our technologies and their applicability to particular raw materials.
This includes process steps such as combustion, gasification, charring, pyrolysis, cooling and drying of solid fuels. The knowledge and data acquired is further applied in process and plant design.
Pilot scale equipment
For initial studies we start with a small-scale approach, using laboratory equipment and material analysis. Progressing to larger scales, we have an extensive set of mid-scale fluidized bed pilot plants available (80mm (3”) CFB, 185mm (7”) CFB reactor, 200mm (8”) CFB reactor, 250mm (10”) CFB reactor).
Our test equipment set-up is completed by a semi-industrial 700 mm (27,5”) CFB reactor, operated up to 1050°C (1922°F) and 1,5 MWth (5,1 MBtu/hour).