Future power: An artist’s concept of China’s first integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant, which is being constructed in LinGang Industrial Park in the Tianjin Binhai New Development Zone.
GreenGen
The United States and China are both focusing on technologies to clean up coal power.
China looks set to overtake the United States in the application of technologies to clean up coal-fired power generation, if several proposed projects come to fruition. GreenGen--a joint venture established by Chinese utilities--has broken ground on China's first integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant and signed agreements to build two more.
At the same time IGCC is stalled in the US. In February, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) canceled an advanced IGCC technology demonstration project called FutureGen, and climate concerns have paralyzed all but one of 30-plus IGCC projects proposed by U.S. utilities since 2000.
GreenGen is now the most advanced project of its kind in the world, according to Ming Sung, Beijing-based Asia/Pacific representative for the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit environmental consulting firm based in Boston. "They are ahead because they have completed engineering [and] design, major equipment is selected and on order, and site preparation and foundation [work] has begun," says Ming.
The oil and gas giant BP reinforced China's position as a clean-coal technology leader last month, by establishing a $73 million research center in Shanghai with the Chinese Academy of Sciences to help commercialize technologies such as carbon capture and storage (CCS) and gasification. In another sign of the country's suddenly bold role in green technology, China's battery giant BYD launched the world's first mass-produced plug-in hybrid vehicle yesterday.
Underpinning China's potential leadership in carbon-neutral coal power is broad expertise with gasification. By 2010, China will have installed 29 gasification projects since 2004, compared with zero in the United States, according to the Gasification Technologies Council, a trade group based in Arlington, VA. Most of these Chinese projects turn coal into synthesis gas (or syngas)--a blend of carbon monoxide and hydrogen--to feed catalysts that synthesize chemicals and fuels. IGCC technology uses the same syngas to drive turbines and generate electricity with far less pollution than conventional coal plants. For example, mercury and soot levels are close to those seen at natural gas-fired plants, while carbon dioxide comes out in a pure stream that should be easier to capture and sequester.
Until recently, Chinese power firms ignored IGCC technology because conventional coal plants are cheaper to build and operate. But Guodong Sun, a technology policy expert at New York's Stony Brook University, says that GreenGen and a few other IGCC projects are gathering momentum thanks to a blend of government incentives, tighter environmental regulation, and emerging concern for corporate self-image among China's leading power producers. Sun says that GreenGen, for example, is important to the national government as a symbol of homegrown Chinese technology.
The project plans to start up a 250-megawatt IGCC plant in Tianjin in 2010 using a novel gasifier designed by the Thermal Power Research Institute in Xi'an; the plant will also supply some syngas and heat to local chemical plants. GreenGen plans to catapult the output of the gasifier design, from a 36-tons-per-day pilot plant, directly to commercial scale of 2,000 tons per day.
And GreenGen is already preparing to scale up further: in April, GreenGen and Tianjin officials signed an agreement for two 400-megawatt IGCC units. Meanwhile, Chinese utility firm Huaneng, GreenGen's majority stakeholder, started up a CCS pilot project at its Beijing coal power plant this summer.
While municipal air-quality concerns support GreenGen's plans, Sun says that they are central to another IGCC project that he believes will be built: a 200-megawatt IGCC plant in Hangzhou proposed by Chinese utility company Huadian Power International. "For the Huadian project, the most important factor is sulfur dioxide and acid-rain regulations," says Sun. "SO2 emissions are capped in Hangzhou, and . . . IGCC is an excellent solution."
Turning coal seams into underground gasification chambers could cut costs and pollution—if done right.
The project will capture CO2 by using it to "loosen" the oil in existing wells.
An Alberta project will transform coal deep beneath the ground into gas.
Within the range of site, fuel and generation objectives there are only small differences across technologies and both are commercial technically. Economic viability remains the major risk and roadblock for these or any other new power plant in the US and other developed countries. If anyone wants to see details, I recommend my report for EPA. I think EPA removed links from their sites, but you can still read the report at Nexant's site with the link below.
http://www.nexant.com/docs/Service/energy_technology/EPA_IGCC.pdf
I still don't see how any kind of "clean coal", or really anything else can hope to compete with nuclear energy.
GeoThermal Electric is the clean alternative to Nuclear, & Coal. Geothermal resources are available everywhere. Some place are cheaper to develop than others. Nuclear energy will always be controlled by big governments, whereas geothermal, concentrated solar, & other alternatives to coal & nuclear have a chance to be privately owned & managed by the people.
China Closes the Clean-Coal Gap
On the first look it seems to be an incredible effort but there are some issues which need to be addressed...but I think it's too early to say anything until it takes actual shape. No doubt, we need to be very careful when it comes to our environment. Being a writer-cum-researcher I am always interested to know more about such topics. Well done guys...keep it up. Rakesh Sharma An Article Writer, SEO Writer & eBook Writer based in India
Our power plants have no way to build new power plants. They can't use Clean Coal, natural gas or nuclear. So you want to use solar or wind - have you thought about the environmental impact of putting in a huge solar or wind farm? Millions of acres dessimated, new power lines run across the USA and massive air and water pollution manufacturing the solar cells and wind turbines. Yet if we want to drill for more natural gass on a 20 acre plot - NO WAY. How about a new Nuclear power plant? Nope - the enviromental wing nuts will file so many lawsuits that it would never get done. So what is the answer? Maybe we should all start using wood as our fuel. Maybe we should go back to the good old days. Now that is the answer!
The environmental wingnuts, as you put, have a point. No new nuclear power plants should be built until someone steps up and addresses how and where they are going to store the waste.
Making this task the responsibility of a generation which is yet to be born, is well, irresponsible. And not to get political, but this thread deserves it to expose the hypocrites: Republicans, the biggest proponents of individual responsibility, are the primary backers of nuclear energy in this country. Yet, they are willing to pass the buck, so that some of their vested interests, can make a buck.
For most products, the only criterion we need is cost. With energy we must worry about cost, CO2, nitric oxides, sulfur oxides, radioactive waste, habitat degradation, human deaths, injuries, and diseases, and animal deaths. We want all of these measures to be low.
No energy technology is lowest in all of them. We must consider tradeoffs.
Assessing a technology on only one of these criteria and then somehow concluding it should be eliminated is stupid.
Coal is inexpensive; if we were to eliminate it, electric power prices go up by a factor of three or so. Do you want to blow up existing plants that would otherwise operate another thirty or forty years? If not, how do you minimize the harms?
This article describes the only technology that radically reduces the cost of reducing the CO2 waste when producing power from coal.
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phoenix
172 Comments
clean old dirty coal
Black lung, entire mountains literally destroyed in an effort to get at the stuff, acid rain and ecosystem destruction as a result of its waste by-products? Regardless of how any country's Energy Department wants to spin it, I'd say that the term 'clean coal' is probably one of the biggest oxymorons of our time. 80 percent of China's rivers no longer support aquatic life and it is home to 7 out of 10 of the most polluted cities in the world.
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