The University of Stuttgart (USTUTT) is one of the leading nine technical universities in Germany (TU9), with highly ranked programs in civil, mechanical, industrial and electrical engineering. Around 22 000 students are enrolled in the courses offered by 80 degree programs. The University of Stuttgart has 4.800 employees among them 250 full professors who work in over 150 institutes, 10 faculties and in central institutions. Research at the University of Stuttgart is strengthened through interdisciplinary networks of cooperation with other research institutions and industry in order to continue to expand the cutting-edge position in these fields.
The Institute of Combustion and Power Plant Technology (IFK) at the University of Stuttgart has gained expertise in energy research for more than 50 years and thus holds considerable experience concerning the thermal utilisation of gaseous, liquid and solid fuels such as coals, biomasses and solid recovered fuels. For all commercially available combustion and gasification systems (i.e.: fixed bed, pulverized fuel, fluidized bed systems and gaseous and liquid fuel boilers), experimental facilities are available with capacities ranging from 5 kW up to 500 kW. In the field of gasification, in these facilities the following mainly technologies are investigated: sorption enhanced gasification (SEG), air gasification, oxygen/steam gasification, and multi stage gasification.
University of Stuttgart website
Role in FLEDGED
Within the FLEDGED consortium USTUTT’s main role lays within the validation tests of the SEG technology in a pilot scale dual fluidized bed reactor. These tasks will look into stationary as well as flexible operation of the SEG process to produce a tailor made syngas with an optimal composition for the subsequent DME synthesis. USTUTT will investigate the SEG process for a relatively high quality biomass to gain benchmark date of a best case scenario as well as potentially more economical low quality biomasses (e.g. waste derived material). Other activities of USTUTT involve specific pretesting small scale activities with the biomasses to investigate later on in pilot scale. These tests aim to prepare the pilot scale test (i.e. identification of operational limitations of the SEG process with the fuels to test). One additional activity in laboratory scale will look into an advanced process layout and operation for the SEG process in order to reduce CH4 contents in the produced syngas and to integrate CH4 recycled from the DME synthesis within the SEG process.
