6-6-08

On June 5 a two hour Hot Topic discussion covered the successes and challenges in gasifying coal. Along the way the demand and advantages of gasification to provide syngas (SNG) and chemicals was also covered. Gasification of biomass has advantages which were also reviewed. A top notch group of speakers included

The McIlvaine Company has introduced “Important Event Odds.” The future of coal gasification depends on many important future events. Some will expand the market and some will shrink it. For a utility purchaser or a market forecaster it is better to make decisions based on the odds rather than a simplistic assumption that an event will or will not occur. The following examples were displayed for participants.

Important Event Odds
Positive Event Odds	Odds (# to 1) that it will happen over next 5 years
Gas stays above $10/MMBtu	5
Toxin removal deemed commercial	3
Gasification becomes only carbon ready option	0.2
Negative Event odds
Wind and solar become major	0.1
Environmentalists block any fossil-fired power plant	0.1
Seas rise 0.5 meters	0.001
Hurricane intensity definitely tied to CO₂	0.0001

Some of the important future events are indirect but others are directly related to the technology. Toxin removal (specifically mercury) is listed as being commercial at odds of 3 to l. Another way of looking at this would be that only 1 in 4 units will have a problem with their carbon bed mercury capture unit.

The speakers exuded confidence about mercury removal with the carbon bed, so maybe the odds are 20 to 1. McIlvaine used the lower odds based on the lack of commercial mercury removal units on coal gasification systems and problems which waste-to-energy plants in Europe have had with carbon beds.

Phil Amick of Conoco cited delivered gas prices in Europe and Asia at $16/MMBtu and higher. So the 5-1 odds of natural gas and LNG remaining high are reasonable.

Lara Helfer has done a lot of permit work at ENSR. She described some of the difficulties in avoiding resistance by environmental groups to these projects. Ultimately, however, the support or rejection of coal projects will be impacted by whether the catastrophic trends actually develop. After the bad hurricane season a few years ago the global warming alarmists predicted that the next year would be even worse. Instead it turned out to be a season with few hurricanes.

Lara spent most of her time talking about the permitting challenges. They include air, wastewater, landfill, UACE, NEPA and States. She also provided power points with details on gasification of municipal waste, scrap tires, sewage sludge and biomass. She agreed with the participant observation that biomass from cellulosic ethanol plants would be a good gasification opportunity. She mentioned the financial credits for biomass substitution as significant.

Phil says the Conoco E Gas system with the two stage design and dry char filtration and recycle combines the advantages of slurry and dry feed systems. It is efficient, simple, safe, and low cost. The Wabash River IGCC is one of the cleanest coal/petcoke-fired power plants in the world. But E Gas can do even better. E Gas with SCR can achieve SO₂, NO_x and PM of less than 0.2 lbs/MMBtu.

Western Kentucky will be the site for the Conoco Phillips-Peabody SNG development. There will 60 BCF annual SNG production, and the project is expected to be in operation in 2014. Over a 30 year life the total production will be equivalent to a 2 TCF gas field. Such a natural gas discovery would make headlines in the Wall St Journal.

Harry Morehead charted the Siemens history on gasification starting with the Schwarze Pumpe 200 MW unit in 1984. Today there are a number of coal-to-chemicals and coal- to-syngas projects. The NCPP coal-to-polypropylene project in China is 2500 MW_th. The JinCheng coal-to-ammonia project is 1000 MW_th. Projects in development include Secure Energy coal-to-SNG, (1000 MW_th), Summit Power (600 MW IGCC) and Sherritt/EPCOR lignite-to-hydrogen (380 MW IGCC). Syngas is cleaned in a venturi scrubber in contrast to the Conoco use of a high temperature ceramic filter. The system can handle a wide variety of fuels including biomass. Siemens offers complete services including operation and maintenance.

Steve Jenkins of CH2M Hill compared pulverized coal and IGCC and concluded that IGCC achieves lower emissions. Nevertheless there are some unique IGCC emission points including the flare, sulfur recovery unit tail gas incinerator, sulfuric acid plant stack, tank vent incinerators, and ASU cooling tower. This combination can result in significant startup and shut down emissions.

Steve reported that the pre-sulfided activated carbon beds at Eastman Chemical are removing 94 percent of the vapor phase mercury. Spent carbon is disposed of in drums. Ash is removed in a molten form and the quench-cooled to form glassy, inert, saleable slag.

Keith Moore of Phenix discussed a different approach. Gasification takes place at the burners in conventional coal- or gas-fired boilers. Limestone is injected along with the coal in an oxygen lean condition. Most of the sulfur is therefore captured and exits with the bottom ash. Success has been achieved with conversion of a spreader stoker boiler. One of the promising opportunities is conversion of existing natural gas-fired boilers to coal-firing.

Individual power points (with the exception of Phenix) can be accessed in the CO₂ Decision Tree as follows.

Replace→ Coal Gasification→ Environmental Considerations→ IGCC Environmental Profiles