FE Consultants (FEC) are proud to announce the success of our long-time client Hazer Group Ltd (Hazer) in producing first hydrogen and graphite from their Commercial Demonstration Plant (CDP) in Perth, Western Australia. The CDP takes Biogas from a water treatment facility and, through the Hazer® Process, produces low-cost, carbon negative hydrogen and high purity graphitic carbon.
FEC first commenced work with Hazer 6 years ago at the St Mary’s Pilot Plant facility in Sydney. Since then, FEC has continued to support the Hazer team on designing specialist mechanical equipment. The Hazer® Process requires equipment design temperatures of over 900°C, putting it at the limit of typical engineering materials and requiring analysis methods at the forefront of engineering practice. Exotic nickel alloys are utilised in the hot section of the plant and assessment methods utilising standards such as ASME BPVC Section III Division 5 and API 579/ASME FFS-1 were applied.
Utilising advanced design tools such as Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), FEC helped achieve an optimised and safe plant for the Hazer® Process. The reactor design in particular required highly specialised analysis including:
- Transient coupled thermo-mechanical simulation of a multi-zone heated furnace with control system feedback loops;
- Simulation of fluidised bed heat transfer, and;
- User-subroutines for the modelling of creep constitutive equations.
FEC is applying these skills to other clean energy projects such as electrolyser design, hydrogen storage and transport and solar thermal systems.
Further Information:
- CDP First Hydrogen Announcement: CDP Announcement
- The Hazer Process: #HazerProcess
- Related Hydrogen Reactor: Rotating Reactor
