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The prospects for coal have received a fillip from re-cent developments in Europe and China. Several European companies have revealed proposals for coal-fired power stations that capture and store car-bon dioxide instead of releasing it into the atmos-phere. The Chinese meanwhile have announced plans for a series of plants to gasify coal and convert it into liquids, and other countries are thinking along the same lines.

Carbon capture

Various European utilities have been developing methods of removing carbon dioxide from exhaust gases of coal-fired power stations. Germany’s RWE has a method that involves the scrubbing of exhaust gases produced by coal-fired stations and removing and separating the carbon dioxide for eventual storage underground. The advantage of this system is that it treats all the exhaust gases from the power stations and can thus be retro-fitted to existing plants.

The system is expensive to operate, however, since it involves the treating of the entire volume of exhaust gases produced. To improve the economics, it is necessary to reduce the volume of exhaust gases. E.On-UK is investigating the idea of minimizing ex-haust gases by burning coal in pure oxygen. Tests are to be carried out at the company’s test facility in Not-tinghamshire in Eastern England.

A third possibility is to remove the carbon dioxide before it reaches the power station stack. This can be done by gasifying the coal at the start of the electric-ity production cycle using oxygen to convert it into a synthetic gas. The carbon dioxide is removed from the syngas, the remainder of which is used to power a gas turbine to generate electricity. Heat may then be recovered from the exhaust gas to power a further, steam-powered generator. The carbon dioxide may be disposed of underground.

This use of synthetic gas to power gas and steam turbines together is known as ‘Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle’ (IGCC). A small number of these have been built, the largest of which is the 335 MW station at Puertollano in Spain. Several more have been proposed recently, including three in Great Brit-ain.

One of these has been proposed at Drym, in South Wales, with a capacity of 460 MW, by Progressive Energy, which also wants to build an 800 MW IGCC station in Yorkshire. E.On has plans for a 450 MW station at Killingholme in Lincolnshire. The last two plants would inject carbon dioxide into oil or gas res-

ervoirs in the North Sea. In the case of the Yorkshire plant, the gas would be used to increase recovery lev-els in the oilfield.

This process of disposing of carbon dioxide under-ground is known as ‘carbon capture’ and seems well-suited to areas such as the North Sea where there ap-pear to be many suitable underground reservoirs in existing or former oil and gas fields. Before this can become widespread, however, European governments need to agree a legal framework for the disposal of carbon dioxide under the sea. A pipeline infrastruc-ture will be needed to handle the gas and there may have to be tax concessions and other inducements for utilities to invest in the new technology.

‘Clean coal’ power could nevertheless represent an attractive alternative to nuclear power in some European countries where there is strong opposition to further nuclear stations. The main potential envi-ronmental drawback to carbon capture is the possibil-ity that the carbon dioxide will not remain under-ground but will eventually leak out back into the at-mosphere.

Liquids from coal

The gasification of coal can provide another techno-logical fix for the coal industry. Using the same ‘Fischer-Tropsch’ process as is used in the production of liquids from natural gas (see ‘Focus’, October 2003), it is possible to manufacture liquids from coal.

China, with its enormous reserves of coal, is be-ginning to examine the prospects for coal-to-liquids (CTL) and has proposals for at least 30 projects. One of China’s largest coal producers, the Shenhua Ningxia Coal Industry Company, has proposed to build a CTL plant capable of producing 70,000 bpd of liquids.

China wants to use such plants to reduce its reli-ance on imported oil. Whilst CTL may not make much of a dent in China’s energy balance in the short term, it may allow the greater use of the country’s low thermal value coal reserves, which are ideal for gasification.

Other schemes

China’s example may be followed by some other countries with large coal reserves. The mining com-pany Anglo American wants to gasify lignite found in Australia’s Latrobe Valley and convert it into liquids: primarily ultra-low sulphur gasoil, for manufacture into diesel. The company now intends to study the feasibility of such a scheme. If the answers are all

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Coal’s prospects receive boost from new technologies

Crude oil and NGLs production

Provisional estimates for OPEC crude-oil production in September 2006 totalled 30.0 mn bpd, including a provisional estimate 2.0 mn bpd from Iraq. For the 11 members of OPEC, NGLs production for Septem-ber is 4.7 mn bpd, bringing total combined production of crude oil and NGLs to 34.8 mn bpd, a increase from September 2005 of 0.3 mn bpd or 0.9%.

Production in the 30 countries of the OECD totalled 19.8 mn bpd in September, a decrease of 2.9% on September 2005.

The CIS produced 12.2 mn bpd in September 2006, an increase of 0.6 mn bpd or 4.9%.

The rest of the world produced 19.0 mn bpd, a rise of 0.7 mn bpd or 3.7%.

Crude oil and NGLs production for the world in September 2006 totalled 85.8 mn bpd, up 0.9 mn bpd or 1.0%.

Natural gas production

World total natural gas production in June 2006 was 225 BCM, down 2 BCM or 0.9% from the previous year.

Production in the CIS was 61 BCM, down 9 BCM or 12.9% on the previous year; US production for the same month was 42 BCM, down 3 BCM or 6.7% from the previous year.

For OECD Europe-23, production was 18 BCM, unchanged; and in Canada, production totalled 16 BCM, up 1 BCM or 6.2%.

Coal and lignite production

World total combined production of coal and lignite in June was 494 mn tonnes, an increase of 8.3% on the previous year. Production in the USA was 84 mn tonnes, up 3 mn tonnes or 3.6%.

Products demand

World total demand for petroleum products in May 2006 was 90.0 mn bpd, up 14.5 mn bpd on 2005 or 17.2%. OECD-30 demand in June was 53.3 mn bpd, a rise of 1.5 mn bpd or 2.8%.

Within the OECD, US demand for the same month was 20.6 mn bpd, up 1.5%. OECD Europe demand in June was 14.9 mn bpd, up

8.8%; Japanese demand in May was 4.4 mn bpd, down 4.3%. OPEC quota levels

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positive, the state of Victoria could have a 60,000 bpd CTL plant by about 2016.

South Africa has the world’s only commercial CTL plant, at Sasolburg, where Sasol is developing

new technology for liquids’ production. It may nev-ertheless be some years before there is a second com-mercial plant anywhere else in the world.

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1 July 2005 16 Mar 2005 1 Nov 2004 Algeria 894 878 862 Indonesia 1451 1425 1399 Iran 4110 4037 3964 Kuwait 2247 2207 2167 Libya 1500 1473 1446 Nigeria 2306 2265 2224 Qatar 726 713 700 S Arabia 9099 8937 8775 UAE 2444 2400 2356 Venezuela 3223 3165 3107 OPEC-10 28000 27500 27 000

(th bpd)

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