Coal Upgrading and New Coal Technologies 22 minutes ago by Evergreen Energy on Thu 15 Nov 2007
Evergreen Energy Founder and Chief Strategy Officer Ted Venners spoke at the CoalTrans 2008 conference in Jakarta, Indonesia, today. Here are some highlights of that appearance.
Coaltrans Conference in Jakarta, Indonesia
on “Investing in Coal Upgrading and New Coal Technologies”
“There is limited good coal and all we have left is low rank coal (LRC)”, remarked Dr. Lobo Balia from the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Republic of Indonesia.
Ted Venners, founder of EEE, addressed his proven technology of upgrading LRC at the Conference, where the following points were made by the speakers:
Coal is and will remain vital for global energy security. It is abundantly available, affordable, and reliable.
It is true that coal resources are more extensive than any other fossil fuel and that coal appears to be the only fossil fuel which can allow production growth to keep pace with overall energy demand during this century.
39% of the world’s electricity (the largest source) is currently from coal and is expected to be 60% by 2030.
1.6 billion people in developing countries do not have access to electricity, while 1 billion people gained electricity via coal in the past two decades.
The big driver of coal consumption is Asia Pacific.
The biggest coal reserves (black and brown) are in the Asia Pacific region.
Coal demand in Asia is currently about 3 billion tonnes – 2.3 billion tonnes in China, 0.4 billion tonnes in India and about 0.3 billion tonnes imported from out of Asia.
China is the largest consumer and miner of coal. Currently it produces 2.4 billion tonnes per year, 1.7 times as many as in 2002.
Coal usage has remained steady in Europe and the USA.
By 2030, we will see US coal production increase from 1.1 billion tonnes per year today to 1.3 billion tonnes per year. Asia coal production is currently 3.5 billion tonnes per year, and is expected to increase to 5.8 billion tonnes per year by 2030.
Use of LRC is key as it potentially unlocks billions of tonnes of coal that will not otherwise be used.
Approximately one half of the coal in the world is LRC.
Comparing current coal production rates (5 billion tonnes per year) to LRC (<1 billion tonnes per year) means that LRC has more than 5 times as many years' availability at current R/P ratio.<br />
High BTU coals are rapidly depleting and very expensive, compared to vast, easy and relatively inexpensive to mine LRC reserves.<br />
China has 52 billion tonnes of LRC and Australia 40 billion tonnes of LRC.
<br /> Use of LRC leads to demand for clean LRC.
Environmental forces require that we “clean up” our LRC.
Given above, the future demand is for clean coal technologies.
As to the clean coal technologies, the Conference compared Coal Upgrading to Coal-To-Liquids (CTL) and Coal Gasification (SNG). It is clear that CTL and SNG are very capital intensive and have significant emissions of CO2, much of which has not been addressed.
The only operating plant at commercial quantities for upgraded coal is K-Fuel® technology. Venners said, “We are way in front of all other clean coal technologies and offer a solution TODAY.”
K-Fuel® technology not only is the most advanced of all the presented technologies, but also is the only one which clearly addressed CO2, mercury and sodium reductions.<br />
The underlying political driver at the Conference was that all countries want to use their own energy sources. When they only have LRC left, they need the K-Fuel® technology to make it happen both economically and environmentally. |
