To conduct a feasibility study for implementation of IGCC power plant concept with

higher net efficiency in India and determination of Power generating potential

Introduction
An Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle, or IGCC, is a power plant using synthetic gas
(syngas). The gasification process can produce syngas from high-sulfur coal, heavy petroleum
residues and biomass.
The plant is called "integrated" because its syngas is produced in a gasification unit in the plant
which has been optimized for the plant's combined cycle. The gasification process produces heat,
and this is reclaimed by steam "waste heat boilers". Steam turbines use this steam.
Integrated coal Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plant is the most environment
friendly coal-fired power generation technology. Most importantly, coal gasification offers the
immediate opportunity to generate power with near zero greenhouse gas emissions and the
pathway to a future hydrogen economy.
The benefits
IGCC is becoming the base load technology of choice, because coal-fueled IGCC plants reduce
emissions by 2/3 from the next cleanest coal-fueled technology, supercritical pulverized coal
(SCPC) plants, and they generate energy at lower, more stable prices than plants that depend on
an increasingly expensive supply of natural gas.
IGCC plants are superior to others in almost every respect:
Energy Security
• Coal gasification can produce a wide variety of useful industrial byproducts,
including hydrogen for vehicles and fuel cells to support a transition to a hydrogen
economy, syngas that can be substituted for natural gas in industrial processes, a
pipeline-quality natural gas substitute, and liquid transportation fuels.
• Greater reliance on domestic coal will decrease dependence on foreign sources of fuel.
• The supply of domestic coal is abundant.
Environmentally Responsible
• Beyond the immediate environmental benefits of reducing emissions of criteria pollutants
and mercury, IGCC technology provides a pathway to cost-effective capture of carbon
dioxide (CO2), the primary greenhouse gas produced by all fossil fuel-fired power plants.
• The rate at which air pollutants are emitted from IGCC plants is 2/3 less than those of
recently permitted SCPC plants having the most modern environmental controls.
• Pre-combustion cleaning processes used to remove air pollutants at IGCC plants produce
marketable by-products. Processes used by conventional coal-fired technologies
generally produce solid waste that requires land filling.
• Gasification is the cleanest method of converting coal into power, making it superior to
other coal technologies such as pulverized coal and fluidized bed boilers with regard to
both environmental performance and efficiency.

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 • IGCC's ability to efficiently remove air pollutants prior to the combustion process and its
capability to capture CO2 makes it flexible to adapt to ever-tightening emission limits.
Cost Effective
• The ongoing expense of retrofitting less flexible conventional coal plants for ever-
tightening environmental regulations will make the life cycle cost of IGCC lower than the
costs of a PC plant.
• Decreasing natural gas supplies coupled with an increase in demand have driven the price
of natural gas sharply higher and created volatility in the gas market. Supplies are not
increasing but demand is, and experts agree this trend is likely to continue.
Proven Technology:
• Coal gasification is not a new technology. It has been in commercial industrial
application in the petrochemical industry for many decades, and has been reliably
demonstrated by current and past IGCC facilities.
• IGCC technology is superior to SCPC plants because an IGCC plant can use a wide
variety of feedstock’s including high-sulfur coals and pet coke that cannot be used in
SCPC plants under current emission limits.
• The superior efficiency of a combined cycle configuration allows an IGCC plant to
produce equal amounts of electricity while consuming less fuel.

IGCC’s Environmental Benefits

• IGCC has the potential for the best emission characteristics among coal-based
technologies.
• IGCC provides for efficient removal of sulfur compounds, particulates and mercury
before the gas is burned instead of removing the compounds from the exhaust gases
following combustion.
• Nitrogen oxide (NOx) emissions are on a par with emissions from a conventional
coal-fired plant equipped with state-of-the-art emission controls.
• Emissions of carbon dioxide are comparable to emissions from a conventional coal plant.
However, should future environmental regulations require the removal of CO2, an IGCC
plant can separate and sequester CO2 from the process at a significantly lower cost than
conventional technologies.
• The IGCC process requires about one-third less water than a pulverized coal plant
• The IGCC process generates less solid waste than a conventional coal plant.
• IGCC plants enjoy greater fuel flexibility than conventional coal plants. IGCC plants can
utilize various coal types, biomass, and other refinery by-products.

Problem definition

My research will be at the junction of three areas: Technical, Economical and Environmental
aspects of IGCC performance improvement. I will investigate methods for extending the support
of high technology for IGCC, particularly focusing on performance improvement with Indian
coal. The idea is to provide new ways of interaction with IGCC advantages and application to
fight with natural gas crisis.
Objectives

Natural gas prices are rising, environmental requirements are becoming more stringent, and there
is an urgent need to diversify the fuel supply. In addition, energy demand is surging in
developing countries like China and India even as pressure builds to reduce greenhouse-gas
emissions worldwide.
To meet this challenging need, Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) system designs
have demonstrated their capability to meet today’s power generation needs through a
combination of high environmental performance, competitive cost-of-electricity and broad fuel
flexibility using a variety of coals and other low value solid opportunity fuels. The capability of
IGCC systems to accommodate wide variation in plant operations including associated fuel and
power requirements illustrates that considerable system design optimization and process
integration are paramount to achieving project objectives. Several solid fuel IGCC projects have
met these design challenges with exceptional performance and fuel flexibility.
Environmental performance is a key benchmark for contemporary Integrated Gasification
Combined Cycle (IGCC) plant designs. IGCC boasts high marks in environmental performance
derived in part from both the fundamental environmental characteristics of the process as well as
advances in gas turbine combustion technology. The earliest commercial-scale coal IGCC plants
are still achieving levels of criteria pollutants lower than those of recently permitted direct
combustion plants. Additional advancements are providing further improvement in
environmental performance as well as capability to deal with a broadening range of applications.
IGCC systems provide significant environmental benefits through lower solids production, lower
criteria pollutant emissions, and income from byproduct sales when applied to the clean
conversion of opportunity fuels such as petroleum coke, refinery residuals and biomass. In
addition, the capability of gas turbine combustion systems to accommodate a wide variety of fuel
gas compositions allows for effective process integration with gasification systems enabling
“poly-generation” of hydrogen and steam, with provisions for cost effective “pre-combustion”
CO2 removal.
Methodology
I will conduct my research adopting an empirical and iterative approach.
First and foremost, a preparation phase will involve a study through available literature of the
operation of the IGCC Power Plant. Further secondary data will be collected from internet,
documents, journal etc and analyzed for different performance parameters; it will provide an
overview of CC, as well as the rules and conventions that have been set in this domain globally.
A study of the solutions and reflexions raised by previous research endeavors will also be
conducted to complete and narrow down the orientation of the study to arrive at a reasonable
techno-managerial approach for performance improvement.

For substation of results a survey with major Power Players will be conducted. As a result of the
analysis phase, I will be in a position to identify problems and opportunities for IGCC Power
Plants.
The evaluations will aim at revealing new concepts and reorienting the research to another
analysis phase and so starting a new cycle. Thus, this process will be iterated along my thesis
(analysis –research – evaluations), each iteration aiming at focusing on the interesting ideas,
developing new ones, and finally refining and enhancing the different outcomes.

Expected outcome
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Therefore, at the end of my PhD, I expect to come out with a set of evaluated tools to be
published, and also develop some plans that may be commercialised and/or utilised in further
research projects on related domains. The tools and demonstrations will illustrate the conceptual
advances made within the PhD as well as providing an approach to evaluating those advances in
practice.

References

1. Hunstown: Ireland's most efficient power plant @ Siemens Power Generation

website.
2. Source: Joe Lucas, Executive Director of Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, as
interviewed on NPR's Science Friday, Friday May 12, 2006.
3. Information Bridge: DOE Scientific and Technical Information - Sponsored by OSTI.
4. Excelsior's Mesaba Project.
5. http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/assumption/pdf/electricity.pdf#page=3.
6. Goodell, Jeff. "Big Coal." pg. 214. New York, Houghton Mifflin. 2006.