Clean Coal Technology for Power Plants – Is that Possible?

I think very few will dispute the fact that at this stage of electric power plant technology development, using coal as fuel for electricity generation is still the cheaper and reliable source of energy as compared to solar and wind.

However, since burning coal emits a huge quantity of pollution like SOx, Nox, and particularly, Carbon Dioxide (CO2), it has been a constant target of protest due to its alleged impact to the climate and to the looming global warming.

Because of this, developers of coal power plants are trying to develop a way to cleanly burn coal for power plants. Most of the coal plants that are constructed today or even those that were constructed years ago employ Flue Gas Desulfurization (FGD) technique to reduce the SOx emission, particularly, the Sulfur Diaoxide (SO2) which causes acid rain; and Electrostatic Precipitator (ESP) to reduce the suspended particle emission of these power plants. On the other hand, some of the power plants that are constructed today use a technology called, Circulating Fluidizes Bed (CFB) which improves the efficiency of coal burning and reduces the SOx and NOx emissions. However, all of these technologies do not reduce the CO2 emission in the atmosphere.

Some researchers are proposing the use of Carbon Sequestration or Carbon capture and storage (CCS) Technology to literally capture the CO2 and bury it under ground.

Although CO2 has been injected into geological formations for various purposes, the long term storage of CO2 is a relatively untried concept. The first integrated pilot-scale CCS power plant was to begin operating in September 2008 in the eastern German power plant Schwarze Pumpe in the hope of answering questions about technological feasibility and economic efficiency.

CCS applied to a modern conventional power plant could reduce CO2 emissions to the atmosphere by approximately 80-90% compared to a plant without CCS. The IPCC estimates that the economic potential of CCS could be between 10% and 55% of the total carbon mitigation effort until year 2100.

Capturing and compressing CO2 requires much energy and would increase the fuel needs of a coal-fired plant with CCS by 25%-40%.

-en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/ Carbon_capture_and_storage

There is also the so called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) (some call it synthetic coal or syngas) technology which converts coal into clean-burning natural gas or synthetic gas. The Plant would capture carbon dioxide that could permanently store or used for enhanced oil recovery. The main problem for IGCC is its extremely high capital cost.

A USD3 Billion coal-to-Natural Gas Plant is being proposed to be constructed in Kentucky, USA, which is expected to produce between 1.7 Billion cubic meters to 1.98 Billion cubic meter of synthetic natural gas annually from more than 3.5 million tons of coal. [-Diesel & Gas Turbine Magazine, Jan. – Feb. 2009 Issue]

The answer to the question is, of course, a YES, but the consequence is always the cost.

Filed in: Polution and Global Warming
Local date: March, 2010

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