Introduction

Future Integrated CO2/Feedstock Management Systems

Increasing market pricing pressure, growing energy demand and pending environmental laws restricting CO2 emissions have focused the world's attention on green energy and conservation but coal and various other feedstocks will continue to be the primary feed for power generation and eventually clean liquid fuels and chemicals as well as synthetic natural gas.

The big three conventional surface-gasification technologies - Shell, ConocoPhillips and GE - all rely on the construction of two large gasifer trains for each 600-MW IGCC plant. Gasifiers used in these processes are highly reliable but require annual maintenance shutdowns. To boost availability to >90%, a third gasifier train is needed.

Gasifiers will have to be larger to handle co-production in large plants. Most gasification technologies rely on air separation unit (ASU) to produce O2 for reaction and some handle low-rank coals such as Shell as ConocoPhillips, but all must be designed for specific fuel source with acceptable Btu and ash-content specifications.

The big advantages of the conventional gasification technologies are that they are proven and have commercial warranties. Still, no new power plants with these technologies are operational in the US. IGCC plants are said to be similar to building refineries upstream of power plants.

Advanced technologies may prove cheaper, more modular, more efficient, and more flexible as far as feedstock sourcing, but most are still in early-stage development with pilot projects at most. Biomass will play a growing role in the feedstock picture, as plants co-fire different kinds of biomass such as prairie grasses, elephant grass and other renewable sources.

The future of coal gasification is hard to predict, but any reliable, cost-effective coal-gasification technology with good CO2 management should ultimately gain a huge market. UCG is surging ahead at the moment as surface gasification struggles with cost, warranties and CO2 management and policies. Low-cost UCG can also easily incorporate CO2 management.

Using gasification instead of fermentation to make renewable transportation fuels is wining favor in the US and innovative technologies are rapidly emerging to gasify non-edible agricultural parts of plants to make CO2-neutral biofuels to meet to reduce imported oil imports.

Join us November 1, 2007 in Houston for an educational briefing on the latest on the energy gasification industry as it searches for cheaper, reliable feedstocks and anticipates new laws restricting CO2 emissions from industrial sources and vehicles to stop the rising amount of heat-trapping gas.