Forschungszentrum Jülich, FZJ, is one of the leading research institutions in Germany with more than 5000 employees. The research programme consists of the three fields of health, energy and environment, and information technology, laying the foundation for future key technologies. Advanced power plants, fuel cells, renewable energies, fusion devices and nuclear safety are the important fields of the main research topic energy technology.
The research field advanced power plants is carried out by the Institute of Energy- and Climate Research (IEK-2). Major projects in this research field focus on the development of plants with combined cycle technology and with steam technology with supercritical steam parameters. The work is carried out in close cooperation with industrial partners to bring the technology developed into the market. For about 15 years, ash and hot gas chemistry are main topics at IEK-2. Within several national and European funded projects, the release of trace elements, hot gas chemistry, chemical hot gas cleaning, high temperature corrosion and slagging and fouling in coal and biomass based conversion systems have been investigated. By way of example IEK-2 coordinated the FP5-project “HIAL” (ENK5-CT2001-00517) on combustion of annual biomass with high alkali content and took part in FP6/7 in the projects CHRISGAS, UNIQUE and GreenSyngas on biomass gasification. Within the German projects HotVeGas and HVIGasTech IEK-2 develops models and databases for prediction of thermo-chemical and physical properties of ashes and slags.
Mainly involved in the project is the division Thermochemistry which deals with fundamental and applied oriented research in the field of high temperature chemistry. Their main research topics are
- Thermo-chemical and thermo-physical properties of gaseous and condensed phases (phase equilibria, thermodynamic data, viscosity, surface tension)
- High temperature applications (advanced energy conversion processes, biomass utilisation, energy storage)
- Vaporization, release, gas phase chemistry
- Corrosion, slagging and fouling, poisoning
- Chemical hot gas cleaning
- Thermodynamic modelling