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World Coal
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June 2015
Coal News
Coal News
T
wo recent conferences have
highlighted the importance of
developing clean coal technologies, with
carbon capture and storage (CCS) top of
the agenda.
On 17 – 21 May, the IEAClean Coal
Centre’s 7
th
Clean Coal Technologies
conference (CCT2015) took place in
Krakow, Poland. Organised with the help
of local hosts, the Central Mining Institute
of Poland, and with the support of the
Polish Ministry of Economy, the
conference attracted almost 200
participants from over 30 countries
attended.
Focus on carbon capture
Carbon capture in all its forms was an
ever-present theme throughout the
conference, although the dominance of
relatively small-scale research bore
testament to the continued struggles faced
by capture demonstrations in Europe
especially. More positively, a keynote from
Juho Lipponen, Head of the CCS Unit at
the International Energy Agency (IEA),
provided insight into the factors that are
making certain CCS demonstrations more
viable, including certainty of the fuel
source, revenue for the CO
2
, governmental
support and the strategic advantage of
claiming a technical first.
As many of these success stories are in
the US, where the value of CO
2
for
enhanced oil recovery in the southern
states is helping a handful of large CCS
demonstrations progress, Tom Sarkus,
Director of Project Financing and
Technology Delpoyment at the US
National Energy Technology Laboratory,
gave more encouraging news for CCS
proponents. Besides the long-awaited
Kemper IGCC project, due to start
operations next year, two other
precombustion capture plants are planned,
and a 240 MW post‑combustion slipstream
on the Petra Nova plant in Texas has
already broken ground.
Presentations from smaller-scale local
projects included Polish utility Tauron’s
‘split flow’ amine pilot, which improves
the energetic integration of the stripper
and adsorber columns, and a relatively
unique solid sorbent pilot based on
pressure swing adsorption (PSA).
This PSA capture pilot was one of the
highlights of the site visit to the Lagisza
power plant, where it has been
successfully operating for around a year
on a small flue gas slipstream. The plant
itself is already renowned for its 460 MW
circulating fluidised bed boiler, which was
the world’s first supercritical CFB and
remains the largest of its kind outside
China. The visit followed on well from a
talk the previous day by Amec Foster
Wheeler, designers of the CFB unit, who
provided an update on ongoing projects in
this field, including the four 550 MW CFB
units that will start up in South Korea next
year.
Flexible coal
The challenge for coal plants to operate
flexibly so they can provide effective
backup to intermittent renewables was
another key theme. Oliver Then, Head of
Power Plant Technologies at
VGB Powertech, highlighted the issue in
the first day’s keynote, reviewing the
growing economic and technical pressure
on coal-fired plants already occurring in
Germany, where dispatch priority for the
large proportion of renewables on the grid
has forced coal plants to operate for
significantly reduced hours at lower
energy prices.
Meanwhile, a series of presentations
from Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems
addressed the technical solutions that have
been developed to improve plant
flexibility, including reducing material
thicknesses to mitigate the effect of
thermal stresses, lowering minimum load
by using more mills and new burner
designs, and achieving rapid, cheaper
start-ups with electrical burner ignition.
Upgrades to power plant control
systems, minimising emissions of
conventional air pollutants such as SO
X
,
NO
X
and particulates (a particular
challenge in China), coal gasification,
biomass cofiring and underground coal
gasification, were also discussed at the
conference.
Clean coal technologies vital
Meanwhile in London, the World Coal
Association held a one-day workshop
entitled ‘Building pathways for Clean
Coal Technologies’, calling on
governments worldwide to recognise the
importance of adopting cleaner coal
technologies.
“For many countries, the reality is that
the only way they can meet their growing
energy needs is through affordable,
readily available coal,” said Mick Buffier,
Group Executive for Sustainable
Development and Industry Relations at
Glencore and the WCA’s Chairman, in the
keynote address. “According to the IEA,
global electricity from coal is expected to
grow by around 33% to 2040. Given this
growth, it is essential that there is greater
investment in cleaner coal technologies to
widen their deployment – this includes
high efficiency, low emissions (HELE) coal
technologies and carbon capture, use and
storage (CCUS).”
“As we approach COP21 at the end of
this year, it is essential that any new
climate agreement is technology neutral,”
Buffier concluded. “Reducing emissions
globally, while ensuring energy security
and economic development, means
investing in all low emission technologies,
including HELE and CCUS.”
INTERNATIONAL
Two conferences highlight importance of clean coal technologies
