Coal gasification syngas treatment

The catalyst is not sensitive to sulfur or other oxo poisons, which is another environmental advantage. Together with the simple but effective decantation, which allows the withdrawal of organic and other byproducts at the very moment of separation, accumulation of activity-decreasing poisons in the catalyst solution is prevented. Therefore no special treatment or purification step is necessary. This reduces the environmental burden still further. For a considerable time the oxo units at Ruhrchemie s plant site were even supplied with syngas derived from coal produced by the TCGP (Ruhrchemie/Ruhrkohle s version of the Texaco coal gasification process). In various cases this can be an important factor as far as local resoruces are concerned. 

Gasification is a much faster reaction than both POX and SMR however, the capital costs are greater as there are more pre-treatment processes required for coal than methane and the syngas needs more cleaning to remove particulates (Mueller-Langer et al, 2007 Holladay et al, 2009). In addition, gasification offers much lower efficiencies than SMR, of the order of 50-60% (Smith et al, 2005), and is not suitable for smaller scale apphcations. 

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