There are many ways to improve the economic viability of BtL
plants. This paper clearly shows that the drying step, while
important, has a major impact on the overall energy balance of the
plant. Any improvement to this step greatly helps the economic
competitiveness of the BtL process.
The new process allows a significant net saving of the heat
consumed in the BtL process. The savings depend on the ambient
conditions. With the drying conditions applied in this paper, the
gain varies from 10 to 30 MW thermal power for a 500 MW thermal
power BtL plant. This heat can be used to produce electricity,
2e7 MW electrical power should be achievable. BtL plants are large
electricity consumers and a reduction of the electricity charges is
interesting to lower the operating costs.
The economic evaluation shows that the new scheme clearly
makes economic sense. The economic gain is sufficiently large to
allow the development a new technology.
The water adsorbent catalysts must be optimised for this use.
The calculations in this paper were based on fairly conservative
estimations, for the operating conditions of the catalysts and their
ability to adsorb water. High performing water gas shift catalysts as
well as drying adsorbents will perform better that presented in this
paper. There may be some room for optimisation of the operating
conditions. A careful optimisation of the solids should be
performed