Efficiency of wet feed IGCC (integrated gasification combined cycle) systems with coal–water slurry preheating vaporization technology

Coal–water slurry (CWS) preheating vaporization technology is an important new technology for the future development of Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) systems, providing an opportunity to improve the energy efficiency of wet feed gasification processes. This manuscript systematically analyzed the influence of integration of this technology on the energy efficiency performance of wet feed IGCC systems with or without carbon capture. We designed, simulated and compared ten cases of IGCC systems, including three wet feed IGCC systems with distinct integration modes for CWS preheating technology, one traditional wet feed IGCC and one dry feed IGCC as reference cases, all of which have one case with carbon capture and another case without carbon capture. The results indicate that, without carbon capture, the overall energy efficiencies of wet feed IGCC systems integrated with this technology are 1–5 percentage points (1%–5%) higher than that of the original wet feed IGCC system, depending on the integration mode. When carbon capture is introduced, the overall energy efficiencies of wet feed IGCC systems integrated with this technology are close to or even higher than that of the dry feed IGCC system.