Project location: CanmetENERGY Ottawa
Timeline: 2023 - 2028
Program: Program of Energy Research and Development
Project description
This project is focused on advancing electrification technologies for industrial decarbonization in high-impact applications. Fluidized beds are often chosen for effective heat and mass transfer. Electrical energy can be transferred to fluidized beds via Joule heating, induction, microwaves or plasma; However, these mechanisms are poorly understood for fluidized beds. The goal of the proposed project is to address technical, market and policy gaps associated with electrical energy transfer to fluidized beds (i.e., electric fluidized beds), and to optimize their design.
The project consists of six main activities, each to be applied to various industrial applications of electric fluidized beds. Each main activity will act as a stage gate to determine whether a given industrial application should be considered in the next main activity. The six main activities are: (1) strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats analyses; (2) material characterization; (3) unit operation modelling; (4) bench-scale testing; (5) techno-economic and life cycle analysis; (6) pilot-scale testing.
Key objectives
- Identify a minimum of two industrial applications for which electric fluidized beds offer the highest potential for decarbonization in Canadian industry, in conjunction with other technical, economic, environmental and societal benefits.
- For two or more electric fluidized bed technologies identified with the first key project objective, raise their technology readiness level to TRL 4.
- For one or more electric fluidized bed technologies identified with the second key project objective, raise their technology readiness level to TRL 6.
Figure 1: Heating mechanisms and development stages for electric fluidized beds.
