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Clean coal technologies are a family of new technological innovations that are
environmentally superior to the technologies in common use today.
Clean coal technologies can be new combustion processes - like fluidized bed
combustion and low-NOx burners - that remove pollutants, or prevent them from
forming, while the coal burns.
Clean coal technologies can be new pollution control devices - like advanced scrubbers -
that clean pollutants from flue gases before they exit a plant's smokestack.
Still other clean coal technologies can convert coal into fuel forms that can be cleaned
before being burned. For example, a clean coal plant may convert coal into a gas that has
the same environmental characteristics as clean-burning natural gas.
Among the key CCTs for PF combustion that reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOx)
are low-NOx burners, which modify emissions by up to 40%, and reburning techniques.
Together these modify the combustion process to reduce NOx emissions by up to 70%,
and are being widely adopted as they can be installed into existing plant. Selective
catalytic NOx reduction, a post-combustion technique, can achieve reductions of 80-90%.
Advanced modern plants use specially developed high strength alloy steels, which enable
the use of supercritical and ultra-supercritical steam (pressures >248 bar and temperatures
>566C) and can achieve, depending on location, close to 45% efficiency.
The advantages of fluidised beds are they produce less NOx in the outlet gas, because of
lower combustion temperatures, and they produce less SOx when limestone is
continuously added with the coal. They can also use a wider range of fuels than PF
combustion.
Pressurised fluidised beds, which can achieve efficiencies of 45%, are now in commercial
operation. As with PF plants, employing higher steam conditions would further boost
efficiency.
Integrated Coal Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power generating systems are
presently being developed and operated in Europe and the USA. These systems give
increased efficiencies by using waste heat from the product gas to produce steam to drive
a steam turbine, in addition to a gas turbine.
Existing commercial systems achieve efficiencies close to 45%. With recent advances in
gas turbine technologies these systems are now capable of reaching above 50%. IGCC
systems additionally produce less solid waste and lower emissions of SOx, NOx and
CO2. Over 99% of the sulphur present in the coal can be recovered for sale as chemically
pure sulphur.
(The description of clean coal technologies above has been drawn from the World Coal
Institute publication - Coal, Power for Progress. See http://www.worldcoal.org )
Fuel cells have the potential for very high power generation efficiency and low carbon
dioxide emissions. ln a coal-fired magnetohydrodynamics system, coal is burned to form
an extremely hot gas or plasma. This is given an electric charge by adding a seed
compound like potassium salt.
When the charged gas is passed through a strong magnetic field, electricity is produced.
Heat from the combustion gases is also used to produce electricity using a conventional
steam turbine.
The use of fuel cells has been demonstrated at the 2 MWe size and plans are underway to
use hydrogen from coal gasification in this and other technologies.
Together with sequestration of CO2 in isolation this clean coal technology provides a nil
CO2 option. However, lower cost equipment and more particularly markets for hydrogen
need to be developed.
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