IEA TCP Fluidized Bed Conversion (FBC). Working period 2013-2016

The Implementing Agreement gives a worldwide overview of the state of the art of fluidized bed technology for its application in the area of energy technology.

The state of the art is the utilization of a wide fuel mix (wood residues, bark, waste, sludges, coal) in relatively small usually stationary fluidized bed units (< 50 MWth). An actual trend is the utilization of sewage sludge and small fluidized bed units using wood as main fuel (< 50 MWth) and larger units (100 MWth) as well as the utilization of municipal solid waste and gas production.

A strong scale-up process of fluidized bed technology based on coal is going on. Its target is the size range of 600 – 1000 MWe with net efficiencies of 45 - 50% to be competitive to pulverized coal (PC) boilers. An important step in this direction was the start up of world's largest fluidized bed unit with 600 MWe in Baima, China in 2013.

Worldwide there is a significantly growing number of fluidized bed units, especially in asia and units in the size range of 500 – 600 MWe are in preparation.

New processes using fluidized bed technology are in development e.g. gasification, oxyfuel combustion, chemical looping combustion (CLC), Ca-looping, CO2 separation and heat storage, all with the focus on neutral or even negative CO2 electricity and heat generation from biomass, waste and fossil fuels.

The IEA FBC Implementing Agreement supports and stimulates the information exchange in regards to the worldwide state of the art and the newest developments.

The next steps are the continuation in the support of these innovative processes in the IEA FBC Implementing Agreement and the improvement and further development of the fluidized bed technology in regards to increasing efficiencies, flexibility and pollutants reduction as well as the information network.

Austria, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Korea, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Spain, UK, USA

a.o.Univ.Prof.Dr. Franz Winter und Univ.Prof. Dipl.-Ing. Dr. Hermann Hofbauer
Institut für Verfahrenstechnik, Umwelttechnik u. Techn. Biowissenschaften
Technische Universität Wien
Getreidemarkt 9/166
A-1060 Wien
Tel.: +43 (1) 58801-166-301
Fax: +43 (1) 58801-166-99
Web: http://www.vt.tuwien.ac.at