Cogeneration and Co-Feed

 
 
In this report, Chinese researchers, perhaps associated with China's massive Coal-to-Oil initiative, reveal that the valuable liquid fuel, Dimethyl Ether (DME) and electricity can be produced at the same time from one coal conversion plant.
 
Part of the article's focus is on the use of natural gas as a co-feed for such dual-purpose facilities. As we've separately documented, natural gas, as is being done in Quatar, can, like coal, be converted into liquid fuel.
 
Some excerpts: 

"Study on co-feed and co-production system based on coal and natural gas for producing DME and electricity"

Li Zhou, Shanying Hu, Yourun Lia and Qihong Zhou

Chemical Engineering Department, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China


 

Abstract

China, an oil and NG scarcity country, is coal dependent, and this situation will remain for a long time. DME, as an ideal replacer of liquid fuel, is considered to develop. The efficient way of producing DME from coal is under research. Considering the components of coal and natural gas (NG), we choose co-feed (coal and NG) and co-production (electricity and DME) system (Co–Co system) to be studied on. Three systems which are the standalone system, co-generation system and Co–Co system are simulated by Aspen-Plus. The simulation results concerning material flows, exergy flows, CO2 emission and the evaluation indexes are obtained. It is found that Co–Co system has higher exergy efficiency, higher economic benefit, and it is environmental friendly because of releasing the least CO2.The analysis illustrates that Co–Co system has obviously advantage over the other two kinds of systems."