GESI =$$$ Here is a nice article on gasification.
www.synthesisservices.com/gasification.php
What is Gasification?
The GTC answer:
Gasification is a flexible, reliable, and clean energy technology that can turn a variety of low-value feedstocks into high-value products, help reduce our dependence on foreign oil and natural gas, and can provide a clean alternative source of baseload electricity, fertilizers, fuels, and chemicals.
It is a manufacturing process that converts any material containing carbon—such as coal, petroleum coke (petcoke), or biomass—into synthesis gas (syngas). The syngas can be burned to produce electricity or further processed to manufacture chemicals, fertilizers, liquid fuels, substitute natural gas (SNG), or hydrogen.
Environmental Benefits of Gasification
Gasification is an environmental solution
The world is facing rapid growth in energy demand, persistently high energy prices, and a challenge to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power generation and manufacturing. No single technology or resource can solve the problem, but gasification can be part of the solution along with renewable power sources such as wind and energy efficiency programs.
Gasification can enhance the U.S. and world energy portfolio while creating fewer air emissions, using less water, and generating less waste than most traditional energy technologies. Whether used for power generation, for production of substitute natural gas, or for production of a large number of energy intensive products, gasification has significant environmental benefits over conventional technologies.
Gasification provides significant environmental benefits
Gasification plants produce significantly lower quantities of criteria air pollutants.
Gasification can reduce the environmental impact of waste disposal because it can use waste products as feedstocks—generating valuable products from materials that would otherwise be disposed as wastes.
Gasification's byproducts are non-hazardous and are readily marketable.
Gasification plants use significantly less water than traditional coal-based power generation, and can be designed so they recycle their process water, discharging none into the surrounding environment.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) can be captured from an industrial gasification plant using commercially proven technologies. In fact, since 2000, the Great Plains Substitute Natural Gas plant in North Dakota has been capturing the same amount of CO2 as a 400 MW coal power plant would produce and sending that CO2 via pipeline to Canada for Enhanced Oil Recovery.
Gasification offers the cleanest, most efficient means of producing electricity from coal and the lowest cost option for capturing CO2 from power generation, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Economic Benefits of Gasification
Gasification can compete effectively in high-price energy environments to provide power and products.
Gasification can be used to turn lower-priced feedstocks, such as petcoke and coal, into very valuable products like electricity, substitute natural gas, fuels, chemicals, and fertilizers. For example, a chemical plant can gasify petcoke or high sulfur coal instead of using high-priced natural gas, thereby reducing its operating costs.
While a gasification power plant is capital intensive (like any very large manufacturing plant), its operating costs are potentially lower than conventional processes or coal-fired plants because gasification plants are more efficient and require less back-end pollution control equipment. With continued research and development efforts and commercial operating experience, the cost of these units will continue to decrease.
Gasification offers wide fuel flexibility. A gasification plant can vary the mix of solid feedstocks, or run on gas or liquid feedstocks—giving it more freedom to adjust to the price and availability of its feedstocks.
The ability to produce a number of high-value products at the same time (polygeneration) also helps a facility offset its capital and operating costs. In addition, the principal gasification byproducts (sulfur and slag) are readily marketable. For example, sulfur can be used as a fertilizer and slag can be used in roadbed construction or in roofing materials.
A state-of-the-art gasification power plant with commercially available technology can perform with efficiency in a range of 38-41 percent. Technology improvements now in advanced testing will boost efficiency to significantly higher levels.
Gasification can increase domestic investment and jobs in manufacturing industries that have recently been in decline because of high energy costs.
Many predict that coal-based power plants and other manufacturing facilities will be required to capture and store CO2, or participate in a carbon cap and trade market. In this scenario, gasification projects will have a cost advantage over conventional technologies. While CO2 capture and sequestration will increase the cost of all forms of power generation, an IGCC plant can capture and compress CO2 at one-half the cost of a traditional pulverized coal plant. Other gasification-based options, including production of motor fuels, chemicals, fertilizers, or hydrogen, to name a few, have even lower carbon capture and compression costs. This will provide a significant economic and environmental benefit in a carbon-constrained world.
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