TRI’s PulseEnhanced™ Gasification Process

Gasification is a thermo-chemical process that converts any carbon-containing material into a synthesis gas (“syngas”) that can be used as a substitute for natural gas or as a feedstock to make value-added biofuels and biochemicals.

The biomass feedstock reacts in the gasifier with steam and oxygen in a reducing (oxygen-starved) atmosphere to produces syngas made up primarily of hydrogen, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and smaller quantities of methane and other hydrocarbons.

TRI’s flagship technology is its patented PulseEnhanced steam reforming gasification system. TRI’s technology can be integrated into paper mill operations and can gasify spent pulping liquor (a byproduct of the paper making process), wood wastes, agricultural wastes or any other carbonaceous material. The system can also be specifically customized to operate alongside a paper mill utilizing nearby biomass to provide energy to the mill and generate biofuels or biochemicals for export.

This indirect heating method utilizes modular pulse combustion heaters in a steam-driven bubbling fluid bed vessel. Heat required to achieve reformer operating temperature and for the endothermic steam-reforming reactions is supplied by the pulsed heat exchangers immersed in the fluidized bed. The heat exchangers consist of bundles of pulsed heater resonance tubes. A portion of the syngas generated in the reformer is burned in the pulsed heaters to supply the necessary heat, thereby making the steam reformer energy self-sufficient, operating on its own fuel. Pulsations in the resonance tubes produce a gas-side heat transfer coefficient which is several times greater than a conventional fired-tube heater. This efficient heat transfer reduces the size and cost of the heat exchangers and reformer vessel. The hot combustion gases leaving the pulsed heaters are sent to a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG) to generate steam. The hot syngas from the reformer is passed through cyclones to remove particulate matter, cooled in a second HRSG, and then quenched and scrubbed. The clean syngas can then be used to produce green energy/power for the paper mill and to generate biofuels and biochemicals.

For more information on how the TRI Steam Reformer works,
download "TRI How It Works Overview.pdf"(Note: This is a 5.4 MB file because it contains flash animations. The download time could be several minutes on slow internet connections)

The flash animations below explain how the pulse combustion heater and the steam reformer work. Click on the image to view the animation.