Coal Study Moves Ahead With Calif. OK
By Wagman, David
Southern California Edison (SCE) will spend $50 million over two years to study the feasibility of combining several advanced coal technologies at full commercial scale. The decision to move forward with the technology assessment followed approval of the plan by the California Public Utilities Commission. SCE’s advanced coal generation study combines for the first time the following elements:
* A chemical process that captures as much as 90 percent of the carbon dioxide in domestic coal.
* Producing a mostly hydrogen fuel and emitting 10 percent of the carbon released by an integrated gasification combined-cycle coal project without carbon capture.
* Burning the hydrogen in a highly efficient, combined-cycle generation system.
* Sequestering the carbon dioxide in a deep saline formation or a depleted oil formation to create enhanced oil recovery.
* The use of these technologies in a full-scale, 600 MW commercial generation facility.
The regulatory approval is the second major endorsement in the past six months of SCE’s proposed feasibility study. The DOE last October announced a grant of more than $65 million to SCE and other participants in the Southwest Regional Partnership for Carbon Sequestration to conduct one of the nation’s first large-scale carbon sequestration studies. The partnership plans to inject several million tons of carbon dioxide into the sandstone formation in the southwestern United States.
As part of the process, coal and water would enter a gasifier where the coal would be converted to a fuel gas. The gas then would undergo further processing to remove sulfur, mercury and carbon dioxide resulting in low-emission hydrogen fuel. Carbon dioxide extracted during the process would be sequestered in underground geologic formations. The hydrogen would be piped to gas turbines to generate electricity. As a last step, exhaust heat from the gas turbines would create steam to drive additional turbines.-David Wagman
Copyright PennWell Publishing Company May 2008
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