Codenamed "FutureGen", it will cost an estimated $1billion and will combine electricity and hydrogen production in a mix of cutting edge technologies gasifying coal to produce a hydrogen rich gas, to power fuel cells or combustion turbines, or to be fed to a refinery for petroleum product upgrading, or used to create fuel for cars and trucks. Pollutants such as SO2 and NOx would be extracted from product gases and converted to useable by-products such as fertilizer and soil enhancers.
A significant new challenge is to design the plant such that its CO2 emissions can captured in a form suitable for sequestering in underground storage caverns. No current technology meets this requirement. The initial target will be 90 percent carbon capture, rising ultimately to 100 per cent. The plant, sized at 275 MW, will itself be a stepping stone towards the goal of creating plants that are not only pollution free, but able to operate at unprecedented fuel efficiencies, 60 per cent or more. Abraham¹s rallying call is the challenge of building a power plant capable of transforming coal fuel from an environmentally embarrassing source into a positively benign one. To bring it about he is asking the power industry to form a consortium that will manage the project and provide at least 20 per cent of the cost of implementing it.
Engineering the prototype will undoubtedly call on the results of technologies developed by the eight DOE part-funded projects announced in January under president Bush's Clean Skies initiative. Particularly apposite is the LG & E proposal which will build an advanced air pollution control system on a 524 MW unit of Ghent power plant, in Carrollton, Kentucky. A technology know as the "Airborne Process" is believed capable of removing 99.5 per cent of SO2, 90 per cent NOx, and 90 per cent of the mercury, while turning the by-products into high quality fertiliser.
The other seven projects are: * A Colorado Springs/Foster Wheeler initiative to create a 150 MW circulating fluid bed combustor with fully integrated advanced emissions controls – 98 per cent SO2, 90 per cent plus Hg.
*Wisconsin Electric Power's "OToxecon" mercury absorber at Presque Isle power plant.
*Great River Energy/EPRI lignite drying project at Coal Creek, where waste heat will be used to increase efficiency by removing nearly a quarter of the moisture in the fuel.
*The NeuCo/Dynergy Midwest Generation project at Baldwin to apply neural networks, advanced algorithms and fuzzy logic computational techniques to achieve peak performance from combustor and soot removal systems, the first time the three methodologies have been employed together.
*University of Kentucky and LG&E are partners in a second Ghent power station project to demonstrate an advanced process for separating unburnt carbon from ash or from ash ponds and recycling it for fuel, a process which also renders the ash suitable for producing a portland-cement substitute called "pozzalan". The Portland cement manufacturing process is one of the most CO2 intensive in the whole of industry.
*Two projects to increase coal gasification techniques to the point where they can be used on the huge resource of waste coal piles around the pits of Pennsylvania and West Virginia. A Waste Management and Processors project at Gilberton at $612 million the largest of the eight will develop a process to produce clean burning diesel oil and high grade heat from raw anthracite waste; Western Greenbrier Cogeneration a newly formed pubic service entity in West Virginia is to team up with several research and engineering firms to demonstrate on a 75 MW plant an innovative circulating fluid bed combustor linked to an advanced multi-pollutant control system to create industrial grade steam and, astonishingly, structural bricks from the waste ash and imported green wood waste.
Linkedin
