NETL Scientists Conclude Simulation Project for Building Commercial-Scale Gasifiers

A process called gasification can turn carbonaceous fuels—coal, petroleum, or biomass—into syngas, a cleaner-burning fuel mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen.

Scientists from the National Energy Technology Laboratory are concluding a three-year project using supercomputers at Oak Ridge and Argonne national laboratories for simulations to reduce the cost and time of building commercial-scale gasifiers. The efforts will inform the design of advanced technologies to supply clean, reliable and affordable electricity.

NETL's Clean Coal Power Initiative, a cost-shared venture of government and industry, aims to employ a commercial-scale gasifier system to sequester 90 percent of the carbon from coal with minimal impact to electricity costs.

"High-performance computing is allowing us to reveal and study features of the gas–solids flow in a gasifier to a degree never before possible, experimentally or computationally," said Madhava Syamlal, principal investigator of the project.