Energy Conversion Processes Laboratory (ECO-lab)
Laboratory of energy conversion processes (ECO-lab) was established in 2013 to execute state-of-the-art experimental research in biomass conversion, batteries, and carbon capture and storage/usage (CCS/U) technologies. The fundamental knowledge created in ECO-lab supports a rapid and cost-efficient technology development at industrial scale.
Fuel preparation and analysis equipment
Particle size is one of the important factors in the optimization of thermochemical conversion processes. Sieves and sieve shaker are used to classify particle sizes into the desired ranges with minimum size interval of 20 µm.

Drying oven is used to keep the moisture content of biomass particle as low as possible prior to the experiments. The temperature inside the oven can be kept from 30 to 300 °C.
Sample separator is used to obtain representative samples from a batch of materials.

Moisture analyzer determines the amount of moisture contained in solid sample by measuring the difference in mass before and after heating to 100 C.

Elementary analyzer can qunatify the mass fraction of CHNS and O in solid and non-volatile liquid sample by combustion/pyrolysis of sample followed by chromatography.

PSSA is equipment for measuring particle size (10-3000 µm) and shape by image analyses of particles dispersed by gas flow at approximately 500 frames per second. It overcomes the limitation of conventional laser diffraction type analyser (particle size is given by sphere particle equivalent).

Heating value of the fuel is one of the most important information for energy purpose. Bomb calorie meter is used to measure heating values of solid samples with standardized method with simple operation procedure.

Equipment for thermochemical reactors
WMR is the equipment to carry out experiments of biomass devolatilization and char gasification at high heating rate (10-10000 K/s) under chemical controlled regime. Small amount of sample (~10 mg; <100 µm) is “sandwiched” between two wire-meshes and heated by pulse intervals of electric current. Solid, liquid and gaseous products from the WMR are then subjected to various analyses. It can be also used for the tests for in-situ diagnosis technologies such as Raman-holography and high-speed imaging.
LIP is developed by and located at Division of Fluid and Experimental Mechanics. It uses Nd:YAG laser to heat single biomass particle (0.1-1 mm). It can heat the fuel particle up to 10000 K/s by changing the laser intensity. We can also observe the phenomena on the particle and near the particle online by using a high speed camera and laser diagnoses. It has a merit of acquiring high time-resolution data (< 1 ms) while it is affected by heterogeneity of biomass much more than AEFR. A spectroscopic laser for this equipment is currently being purchased.
macroTG is a vertical tubular reactor with a relatively big particle (2-20 mm) suspended in high temperature atmosphere. By suspending the particles to a precision scale, mass loss profile can be recorded for a long residence time. It will be used to characterize the fuel conversion of relatively large particles such as wood pellets.

The DTF is a vertical tubular reactor with maximum temperature of 1450 °C. Biomass particles (<1 mm) are dispersed and fed to the reactor with laminar gas flow. Particles experience rapid heating (>1000 K/s) and chemical reactions. Reaction behaviour is observed in-situ by various equipment and laser diagnosis at the Div. Fluid and Experimental Mechanics. Reaction products (gas, tar, char and ash) are collected and analysed further. The results can be used to examine the reaction kinetics, heat and mass transfer, particle morphology, and ash transformation under well-controlled reaction conditions.

FFPB is a vertical tubular reactor with premixed gas flame. Like DTF, biomass particles (<0.2 mm) are fed to the reactor with laminar gas flow. However, biomass is heated by the premixed methane flame instead of the wall heaters in FFPB. The FFPB is optimal setup for examining the initial fuel conversion behaviour with optical measurement methods.

MFDR, Amalia, is 30kW atmospheric downfired combustion/gasification reactor with multiple optical accesses. Solid or liquid fuels will be fed into the reactor by a swirl burner instead of dispersed falling of DTF/FFPB. The flame characteristics will be studied under highly turbulent flow by changing swirl number etc. It can be also used to validate the numerical simulation models of entrained flow gasifiers as well as pulverized solid burners.

Electrically heated fully automatically fluidized bed reactor (statistical bed height and bed diameter of approximately 50 mm) is designed for detailed studies of ash transformation reactions in fluidized beds, especially the fuel ash/inorganic matter and bed particle reaction process. The reactor could be operated in both combustion and gasification atmospheres at relevant bed temperatures (800-950 °C).
Measurement and analytical equipment
µ-GC is equipment used to analyse the gas composition (H2, O2, N2, CO, CH4, CO2, C2-C4, COS, and H2S) at relatively short time intervals (ca. 120 s). This equipment is used to measure the gas composition of product gas from continuous-type reactors (AEFR, FBR and MFDR).




The LPI is used to determine the particle matter mass size distribution. The LPI separates particles according to their aerodynamic diameter in the interval of 0.03–10 μm.
3CCD pyrometer is used to measure particle and flame temperature using radiation emitted from particle surfaces. Optically aligned 3 CCD cameras capture the signals for certain wavelengths. We can get temperature information from the ratio of emission at two or three different wavelengths, which changes according to particle temperature. We can measure temperature at the range of 1000-2000 K.
Volume fraction of sub-micron particles (e.g. soot) can be measured by using extinction rate of laser lights. It is possible to distinguish large (fuel) particles from sub-micron particles by the fact that different (wavelengths of) light sources have different extinction coefficients for sub-micron particles.
Online gas analyzer - Testo
Two image-intensified high speed cameras (procurement on-going)
Financing
The development of the ECO lab began in 2012/2013 when approximately 5.5 MSEK was invested by various financiers. Since then, the laboratory has slowly expanded.
- LTU laboratory foundation
- Kempe Foundation
- The Swedish Energy Agency
- Bio4Energy
- Solander Science Park
- Nordic Energy
- Swedish Research Council
- Internal funding
Contact
Kentaro Umeki
- Professor
- 0920-492484
- kentaro.umeki@ltu.se
- Kentaro Umeki
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