Supercritical water gasification research and development in China

•Coal is gasified in supercritical water with carbon gasification efficiency of 100%;•A novel thermodynamics cycle is proposed based on SCWG of coal with zero emission;•Research and development of supercritical water gasification in China are reviewed.

Supercritical water gasification is a promising technology to convert coal/biomass/organic wastes to hydrogen cleanly and efficiently. Extensive investigations on supercritical water gasification were conducted in China. State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering (SKLMFPE) together with other universities/institutes established experimental device with the reactor type of quartz tube reaction system, tubular reactor and fluidized bed reactor. The fluidized bed reactor system solved the blocking problems to guarantee continuous and stable gasification. Typically Hongliulin coal as a typical coal in China was completely gasified in supercritical water fluidized bed system and the hydrogen yield was 77.5 mol per kg of coal. A pilot scale demonstration plant for supercritical water gasification driven by solar concentration system was established with a handling capacity of 1 t/h and it proves the feasibility of the system scale up. A novel thermodynamics cycle power generation system based on coal gasification in supercritical water was proposed with the obvious advantages of high coal-electricity efficiency and zero pollutant emission. An Integrated Cooperative Innovation Center with the name of A New Type of High-efficient Coal Gasification Technology and its Large-scale Utilization was founded in order to vigorously enhance the industrialization of the technology.

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