Modelling and dynamics of an air separation rectification column as part of an IGCC power plant

An Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle plant (IGCC) opens the well-proven and highly efficient combined cycle process to fossil fuels, like coal or heavy refinery residues. Such a plant thereby possesses a novel linkage of typical energy engineering related units, e.g. a gas turbine and typical process engineering parts, which in the present case is an air separation plant. Different responses from the connected components can cause undesired mass flow fluctuations within the system especially during changing load demands. The cryogenic rectification column, as the core of the air separation plant, strongly affects the system's transient behaviour. The upper part of such a heat-integrated double column, a packed column with structured packing, has therefore been more closely investigated in the present paper. For this purpose, a dynamic model of such a column has been developed which is also able to describe the pressure dynamics supposedly responsible for these mass flow fluctuations. The transient behaviour of the uncontrolled column is analysed and discussed with special regard to pressure dynamics. The column pressure responds to disturbances on two different time scales. The short-term response, which is in the range of 100–200 s, is governed by the transient behaviour of the fluid dynamics and is discussed in detail. The long-term response is dominated by the nonlinear dynamics of the concentration profiles. The time constant of this response depends strongly on the direction and intensity of the disturbance and takes from 10,000 up to several 100,000 s.