FAMR
Fluidized-bed Air-blown Mixed-gas Reformer Hydrogen Production Technology
A Practical and Economical Solution for Existing Electricity Generating Units (NGCC and retrofitted boiler facilities) to Achieve Near Zero Carbon Emissions
- Pressurized two-stage reactor designed to convert efficiently over 99% of the hydrocarbons in natural gas (NG) into syngas.
- A single FAMR unit can provide enough H2 to meet the demands of a modern gas turbine (GT) or a 1000 MW boiler, while enabling steam generation for a steam turbine (ST).
- The FAMR unit is an autothermal reformer that harnesses the heat produced during partial oxidation of methane to facilitate the endothermic reforming reactions. This process ensures that all the nitrogen from the incoming air remains part of the feed gas mixture with hydrogen to gas turbine, requiring minimum gas turbine modification.
- The steam to methane ratio can be as low as 1.3:1 for FAMR unit, a substantial saving compared to current conventional SMR units requiring >3:1 ratio resulting in less water consumption and higher power generation.
- HRSG is a fluidized bed syngas cooler, similar to a fluidized bed combustor, with embedded cooling coils to simply cool the syngas to desired temperature (about 300 oC) with high heat transfer coefficients.
- Existing technologies as well as many of the proposed developmental work are impractical or economically unfeasible to address needs of existing EGUs in a carbon constrained environment.
- FAMR offers significantly lower economic barriers compared to other processes.
- FAMR lowers cost for capturing CO2 from the syngas stream with both high-pressure operation and high CO2 concentration in syngas stream.
- Infrastructure additions to existing EGUs are relatively much smaller with FAMR technology adoption compared to other existing and developing technologies.
- Leveraging vast prior experience and utilizing similar design principles in developing the much simpler FAMR technology will be helpful in meeting EPA's carbon emission objectives and deadlines for existing EGUs.
- FAMR process integration maximizes power generation in existing EGUs with minimum power consumption.
- FAMR reactor and process can easily be adopted to produce pure hydrogen with oxygen-blown operations instead of air-blown.
