Australia’s coal industry is the largest in the world and is worth over $24 billion* in exports each year. However, as concerns grow over carbon dioxide emissions generated by conventional coal-fired power plants, the race is now on to develop viable clean coal technology.
Clean coal technologies should allow Australia’s massive coal industry to continue to grow while substantially reducing its environmental impact.
ZeroGen is an Australian demonstration project currently leading the pack in the pursuit of clean coal technology.
ZeroGen has contracted Stanwell Corporation to manage the project and includes Shell, the Electric Power Research Institute, MBA Petroleum Consultants, Upstream Petroleum, Resource Land Management Services and the US giant GE Energy in its partnership.
The CEO of Australia’s Centre for Low Emissions Technology, Dr Kelly Thambimuthu, is one of many energy experts who emphasises the integral part that clean coal technologies will play in the future of the nation’s coal industry.
“The importance of clean coal technology for Australia is because Australia’s so dependent on coal for power generation,” Dr Thambimuthu says. “Globally, 40 per cent of our power – electricity – is produced from coal. In Australia it’s 80 per cent. When the technology is fully developed and implemented it could remove between 85 and 95 per cent of the CO2 emissions economically.”
With clean coal plants offering the potential for such significant emissions reductions, local and national governments are now actively backing the development of the technology.
Following three years of review work, ZeroGen was established by the Queensland Government earlier in 2007, to conduct a feasibility study into the viability of establishing a clean coal demonstration plant.
It is hoped that this plant could be demonstrating clean coal energy production as early as 2011, and ZeroGen Project Manager Chris Wheeler says that the project is significant not just in Australia, but globally.
“This project is one of three clean coal demonstration projects that uses the gasification process,” Mr Wheeler says.
“We’re currently classified as number one by the World Coal Institute and the reason for that is the development timeline that we’ve got – we’re being very aggressive in the way that we’re trying to develop the project.
“We’re actually covering all of the elements of clean coal technology; which is taking coal in at one end, converting it to clean power, generating electricity, capturing the carbon dioxide and actually storing the carbon dioxide in the ground.
"So we’re looking at all elements of the technology which will prove up to the investors that the technology is an opportunity for commercial investment in the future.”
The ZeroGen plant will combine the processes of gasification and carbon capture to create what is likely to be the world’s first demonstration plant of its type. Dr Thambimuthu explains the theories behind the two technologies.
“The ZeroGen project combines what is called an IGCC process, with CO2 capture and storage. And IGCC is basically converting coal into hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
"The hydrogen is used to produce electricity, and in the transport sector and for other users as well – fuel cell cars for example.
“Once you’ve captured the carbon dioxide, you compress it and you pipeline it and you inject it underground for storage indefinitely - where oil and gas has been trapped for centuries, if not millions of years.”
The ZeroGen project has just completed the first stage of its drilling program, as part of the feasibility study near Emerald, in central Queensland. The drilling program aims to test the ability of underground reservoirs in the Northern Denison Trough to safely store carbon dioxide, and has so far produced positive results.
“The DP1 work that we’ve been doing is a part of the geological work, which is the storage of carbon dioxide,” Mr Wheeler says.
“The elements are that we must ensure that the carbon dioxide is stored safely and that we can actually inject it into the formations. And we’ve got sufficient results now to prove that we have got the safety elements, and we are able to inject.
"That allows us to go into DP2 which is actually proving up that we’ve got sufficient capacity to store the carbon dioxide for the demonstration project.”
The second stage of the drilling program is set to begin this month, in line with the project’s tight timeline, which aims to complete feasibility testing by 2008. ZeroGen could then begin construction of its demonstration plant in early 2009.
However the project’s stakeholder relations manager, Chai McConnell, believes government legislation must change before the technologies themselves can become economically viable for the coal mining industry.
“There’s a constellation of factors that are associated with the commercial viability of clean coal technologies,” Mr McConnell says. “At present they’re not commercial because there’s no pricing mechanism for carbon dioxide.
“But in the future we believe that there will be a carbon constraint, there will be some pricing mechanism put into place and so that is a key step towards making these technologies viable.
“However, in the interim what we need to do is identify the risks; they’re the commercial risks, the stakeholder risks, the regulatory risks, and also the technical risks of the technology, so that when a pricing regime comes into effect, those risks have been identified and then they can be fed into the deployment of these large scale plants all around the world."
Despite the currently prohibitive costs associated with implementing clean coal technologies, development ventures such as ZeroGen do have the support of the coal industry.
ZeroGen is also well positioned to secure a share of Queensland Government’s $900 million in funding, which it has allocated to the development of clean coal technologies. Chai McConnell and the ZeroGen team are upbeat about the future.
“There is a real buzz in the office about making a real difference to trying to tackle that issue of deep cuts in CO2 emissions, but at the same time keeping the lights on that powers our hospitals, our schools and our industries,” he says.
“There’s a number of challenges that we have to overcome, but it really gets the whole team out of their comfort zone tackling this issue and making a real contribution to the number one issue that’s affecting societies all around the world, and that is climate change.”
* www.australiancoal.com.au/overview.htm
ZeroGen is an Australian demonstration project currently leading the pack in the pursuit of clean coal technology.
ZeroGen has contracted Stanwell Corporation to manage the project and includes Shell, the Electric Power Research Institute, MBA Petroleum Consultants, Upstream Petroleum, Resource Land Management Services and the US giant GE Energy in its partnership.
The CEO of Australia’s Centre for Low Emissions Technology, Dr Kelly Thambimuthu, is one of many energy experts who emphasises the integral part that clean coal technologies will play in the future of the nation’s coal industry.
“The importance of clean coal technology for Australia is because Australia’s so dependent on coal for power generation,” Dr Thambimuthu says. “Globally, 40 per cent of our power – electricity – is produced from coal. In Australia it’s 80 per cent. When the technology is fully developed and implemented it could remove between 85 and 95 per cent of the CO2 emissions economically.”
With clean coal plants offering the potential for such significant emissions reductions, local and national governments are now actively backing the development of the technology.
Following three years of review work, ZeroGen was established by the Queensland Government earlier in 2007, to conduct a feasibility study into the viability of establishing a clean coal demonstration plant.
It is hoped that this plant could be demonstrating clean coal energy production as early as 2011, and ZeroGen Project Manager Chris Wheeler says that the project is significant not just in Australia, but globally.
“This project is one of three clean coal demonstration projects that uses the gasification process,” Mr Wheeler says.
“We’re currently classified as number one by the World Coal Institute and the reason for that is the development timeline that we’ve got – we’re being very aggressive in the way that we’re trying to develop the project.
“We’re actually covering all of the elements of clean coal technology; which is taking coal in at one end, converting it to clean power, generating electricity, capturing the carbon dioxide and actually storing the carbon dioxide in the ground.
"So we’re looking at all elements of the technology which will prove up to the investors that the technology is an opportunity for commercial investment in the future.”
The ZeroGen plant will combine the processes of gasification and carbon capture to create what is likely to be the world’s first demonstration plant of its type. Dr Thambimuthu explains the theories behind the two technologies.
“The ZeroGen project combines what is called an IGCC process, with CO2 capture and storage. And IGCC is basically converting coal into hydrogen and carbon dioxide.
"The hydrogen is used to produce electricity, and in the transport sector and for other users as well – fuel cell cars for example.
“Once you’ve captured the carbon dioxide, you compress it and you pipeline it and you inject it underground for storage indefinitely - where oil and gas has been trapped for centuries, if not millions of years.”
The ZeroGen project has just completed the first stage of its drilling program, as part of the feasibility study near Emerald, in central Queensland. The drilling program aims to test the ability of underground reservoirs in the Northern Denison Trough to safely store carbon dioxide, and has so far produced positive results.
“The DP1 work that we’ve been doing is a part of the geological work, which is the storage of carbon dioxide,” Mr Wheeler says.
“The elements are that we must ensure that the carbon dioxide is stored safely and that we can actually inject it into the formations. And we’ve got sufficient results now to prove that we have got the safety elements, and we are able to inject.
"That allows us to go into DP2 which is actually proving up that we’ve got sufficient capacity to store the carbon dioxide for the demonstration project.”
The second stage of the drilling program is set to begin this month, in line with the project’s tight timeline, which aims to complete feasibility testing by 2008. ZeroGen could then begin construction of its demonstration plant in early 2009.
However the project’s stakeholder relations manager, Chai McConnell, believes government legislation must change before the technologies themselves can become economically viable for the coal mining industry.
“There’s a constellation of factors that are associated with the commercial viability of clean coal technologies,” Mr McConnell says. “At present they’re not commercial because there’s no pricing mechanism for carbon dioxide.
“But in the future we believe that there will be a carbon constraint, there will be some pricing mechanism put into place and so that is a key step towards making these technologies viable.
“However, in the interim what we need to do is identify the risks; they’re the commercial risks, the stakeholder risks, the regulatory risks, and also the technical risks of the technology, so that when a pricing regime comes into effect, those risks have been identified and then they can be fed into the deployment of these large scale plants all around the world."
Despite the currently prohibitive costs associated with implementing clean coal technologies, development ventures such as ZeroGen do have the support of the coal industry.
ZeroGen is also well positioned to secure a share of Queensland Government’s $900 million in funding, which it has allocated to the development of clean coal technologies. Chai McConnell and the ZeroGen team are upbeat about the future.
“There is a real buzz in the office about making a real difference to trying to tackle that issue of deep cuts in CO2 emissions, but at the same time keeping the lights on that powers our hospitals, our schools and our industries,” he says.
“There’s a number of challenges that we have to overcome, but it really gets the whole team out of their comfort zone tackling this issue and making a real contribution to the number one issue that’s affecting societies all around the world, and that is climate change.”
* www.australiancoal.com.au/overview.htm
