Chemical and Process Engineering: New Frontiers

The paper presents a review of current achievements in the Electrical Capacitance Tomography (ECT) in relation to its possible applications in the study of phenomena occurring in fluidised bed reactors. Reactors of that kind are being increasingly used in chemical engineering, energetics (fluidised bed boilers) or industrial dryers. However, not all phenomena in the fluidised bed have been thoroughly understood. This results in the need to explore and develop new research methods. Various aspects of ECT operation and data processing are described with their applicability in scientific research. The idea for investigation of temperature distribution in the fluidised bed, using multimodal tomography, is also introduced. Metrological requirements of process tomography such as sensitivity, resolution, and speed of data acquiring are noted.

Gravity dewatering of fibrous suspension is one of basic technological operations in paper production process. Although there are numerous methods to determine dewatering of such suspensions, none of them can measure undisturbed flow of removed water. In the paper the idea and design of a new apparatus for the determination of drainage rate of fibrous suspensions is presented. The apparatus differs from other known devices by minimisation of filtrate flow resistance in the outlet part of the equipment. In the second part of the paper measurements of the drainage rate have been presented. The flow resistance of the fluid through the bottom wire screen in the device was determined. The calculated flow resistance will be used in the developed model of dynamic drainage of fibrous suspensions, which will be discussed in our following paper (Przybysz et al., 2014).

The study analyses application possibilities of filtration and thickening models in evaluation of papermaking suspension drainage rate. The authors proposed their own method to estimate the drainage rate on the basis of an existing Ergun capillary model of liquid flow through a granular material. The proposed model was less sensitive to porosity changes than the Ergun model. An empirical verification proved robustness of the proposed approach. Taking into account discrepancies in the published data concerning how the drainage velocity of papermaking suspension is defined, this study examines which of the commonly applied models matches experimental results the best.

Recent studies in the area of biological air treatment in filters have addressed fundamental key issues, such as a biofilter bed of different origin composed of natural zeolite granules, foam cubes and wood chips. When foam and zeolite are mixed with wood chips to remove volatile organic compounds from the air, not only biological but also adsorption air purification methods are accomplished. The use of complex purification technologies helps to improve the efficiency of a filter as well as the bed service life of the filter bed. Investigations revealed that microorganisms prevailing in biological purification, can also reproduce themselves in biofilter beds of inorganic and synthetic origin composed of natural zeolite and foam. By cultivating associations of spontaneous microorganisms in the filter bed the dependencies of the purification efficiency of filter on the origin, concentration and filtration time of injected pollutants were determined. The highest purification efficiency was obtained when air polluted with acetone vapour was supplied to the equipment at 0.1 m/s of superficial gas velocity. When cleaning air from volatile organic compounds (acetone, toluene and butanol), under the initial pollutant concentration of ~100 mg/m3, the filter efficiency reached 95 %.

The paper presents the algorithms for a flue gas/water waste-heat exchanger with and without condensation of water vapour contained in flue gas with experimental validation of theoretical results. The algorithms were used for calculations of the area of a heat exchanger using waste heat from a pulverised brown coal fired steam boiler operating in a power unit with a capacity of 900 MWe. In calculation of the condensing part, the calculation results obtained with two algorithms were compared (Colburn-Hobler and VDI algorithms). The VDI algorithm allowed to take into account the condensation of water vapour for flue gas temperatures above the temperature of the water dew point. Thanks to this, it was possible to calculate more accurately the required heat transfer area, which resulted in its reduction by 19 %. In addition, the influence of the mass transfer on the heat transfer area was taken into account, which contributed to a further reduction in the calculated size of the heat exchanger - in total by 28% as compared with the Colburn-Hobler algorithm. The presented VDI algorithm was used to design a 312 kW pilot-scale condensing heat exchanger installed in PGE Belchatow power plant. Obtained experimental results are in a good agreement with calculated values.

Fully synthetic, biochemically inert and water-immiscible liquid perfluorochemicals (PFCs) are recognised as flexible liquid carriers/scavengers of gaseous compounds (respiratory gases mainly, i.e. O2 and CO2) and increasingly applied in bioprocess engineering. A range of unmatched physicochemical properties of liquid PFCs, i.e. outstanding chemo- and thermostability, extremely low surface tension, simultaneous hydro- and lipophobicity, which result from carbon chain substitution with fluorine atoms (the most electronegative chemical element) and the presence of intramolecular C-F bonds (the strongest single bond known in organic chemistry) have been described in detail. Exceptional propensity to solubility of respiratory gases in liquid perfluorinated compounds has been widely discussed. Advantages and disadvantages of bioprocess applications of liquid PFCs in the form of a pure PFC as well as in an emulsified form have been pointed out. A liquid PFC-mediated mass transfer intensification in various types of microbial, plant cell and animal cell culture systems: from miniaturised microlitre-scale cultures, via biomaterial-based scaffolds containing culture systems, to litre-scale bioreactors, has been reviewed and elaborated on bearing in mind the benefits of bioprocesses.

This paper presents a study on nitrogen conversion in oxy-fuel coal combustion in a pilot scale CFB 0.1 MWth facility. The paper is focused on fuel-N behaviour in the combustion chamber when the combustion process is accomplished under oxy-fuel CFB conditions. The analysis is based on infurnace sampling of flue gas and calculations of the conversion ratios of fuel-nitrogen (fuel-N) to NO, NO2, N2O, NH3 and HCN. For the tests, O2/CO2 mixtures with the oxygen content of 21 vol.% (primary gas) and with the oxygen content varied from 21 to 35 vol.% (secondary gas), were used as the fluidising gas. Measurements were carried out in 4 control points located along the combustion chamber: 0.43 m, 1.45 m, 2.50 m and 4.88 m. Results presented below indicate that an increased oxygen concentration in the higher part of the combustion chamber has strong influence on the behaviour of fuel based nitrogen compounds.

Three commercially available intercooled compression strategies for compressing CO2 were studied. All of the compression concepts required a final delivery pressure of 153 bar at the inlet to the pipeline. Then, simulations were used to determine the maximum safe pipeline distance to subsequent booster stations as a function of inlet pressure, environmental temperature, thickness of the thermal insulation and ground level heat flux conditions. The results show that subcooled liquid transport increases energy efficiency and minimises the cost of CO2 transport over long distances under heat transfer conditions. The study also found that the thermal insulation layer should not be laid on the external surface of the pipe in atmospheric conditions in Poland. The most important problems from the environmental protection point of view are rigorous and robust hazard identification which indirectly affects CO2 transportation. This paper analyses ways of reducing transport risk by means of safety valves.

This paper presents the results of research focused on the lowering of ash flow temperature at semianthracite coal from Donbas district by means of additive (calcite) dosing. Ash fusion temperatures were set for two coal samples (A, B) and for five various states (samples of ash without any additives, with 1%, with 3%, with 5% and with 7% of the additive) in total. The macroscopicphotographic method was used for identifying all specific temperatures. Obtained outputs prove that A type coal has a lower value of sphere temperature than B type coal in the whole scope of percentage representation of the additive. The flow temperature dropped in total from 1489 °C to 1280 °C, i.e. by 14% during the test of coal of type A with 7% of the additive; while it was near 10% for coal of type B (from 1450 °C to 1308 °C). Numerical simulations of the process showed that it is not effective to add an additive with a grain size lower than 280 μm by means of wastevapour burners.