What is Clean Coal?

Clean coal is a broad term that represents technologies that allow for cost effective conversion of coal into more favorable products while minimizing or eliminating waste byproducts.  Coal can contain particulates, and coal combustion can release NOx and SOx emissions into the environment.  Of particular concern recently is the release of CO2 into the environment from coal combustion.

Clean coal technologies such as gasification completely contain and remove particulates as well as NOx and SOx emissions, and allow for high pressure CO2 sequestration.  Many economically beneficial uses for CO2 exist, such as Enhanced Oil Recovery and Enhanced Coal Bed Methane, and increased research is being performed worldwide on geological CO2 sequestration.

What are the environmental benefits of gasification vs. conventional combustion?

Gasification converts carbon-containing material such as coal, petroleum coke, and biomass into synthesis gas (syngas), which can be used to produce electricity or further processed to manufacture chemicals, fertilizers, transportation fuels, substitute natural gas or hydrogen.  It allows for containment and resale of byproducts from coal, petcoke, and biomass  use, while producing a spectrum of products from hydrogen and power to transportation fuels.

Conventional combustion can only produce electricity (from steam), and byproducts of combustion must be scrubbed from the smokestack.  Combustion of coal makes it very difficult to sequester CO2, since it is typically mixed with large quantities of nitrogen and must be separated near atmospheric pressure.

Can ZEEP really produce a zero emission plant?

Using gasification and other commercially available technologies, ZEEP can build energy plants that sequester for resale all sulfur and particulate emissions, as well as more than 90% of all CO2.  It is ZEEP’s mission to build zero emission plants, and we will continue to seek and invest in technologies that bring us closer to this goal.

What is gasification?

Gasification is a proven process that converts hydrocarbons such as coal, petroleum coke (petcoke), and biomass to syngas (synthesis gas), which can be used as a substitute for natural gas or processed further to produce hydrogen, electricity, chemicals, fertilizers, and liquid fuels.

Gasification is an efficient, commercially proven technology that converts low-value feedstocks into a variety of high-value clean energy products.

Who uses gasification?

Gasification has been used worldwide for more than 50 years for the commercial production of chemicals, fertilizers and in the refining /liquid fuels industries. The electric power industry has used gasification for more than 35 years.

Gasification is also available to help in the production of oil from the vast Canadian oil sand deposits and substitute natural gas from America’s abundant coal resources.”

(Source – Gasification.org)

What are the economic benefits of gasification?

The economic benefits of gasification are as numerous as they are significant. At the very core is the ability to convert low-value feedstocks to high-value, clean energy products. This in turn increases the use of available feedstocks. Even by-products, such as petcoke, and low value feedstocks, such as lignite (brown coal) that may have even been abandoned, can be utilized to produce high-value products.