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There are numerous economic and environmental benefits associated with gasification. Gasification can compete effectively in high-price energy environments to provide power and products. Gasification can enhance the U.S. and world energy portfolio while creating fewer air emissions, using less water, and generating less waste than most traditional energy technologies.
a. Economic Benefits
1. Low-cost feedstocks can be converted to high-value products.
Gasification can be used to turn lower-priced feedstocks, into valuable products including electricity, and a variety of fuels, chemicals, and fertilizers. For example, a chemical plant can gasify corn stover instead of using high-priced natural gas, thereby reducing its operating costs. Examples of feedstocks for gasification:
a. Coal
b. Petroleum Coke
c. Biomass
d. Municipal Waste
2. More efficient and less costly than conventional processes.
Gasification power plants are more efficient and require less back-end pollution control equipment than conventional processes or coal-fired plants. As a result, the operating costs are potentially lower for gasification plants.
3. Wide fuel flexibility.
A gasification plant can vary the mix of gas, liquid, or solid feedstocks, giving it more freedom to adjust to the price and availability of its feedstocks.
4. Multiple products can be produced simultaneously.
Gasification offers “poly-generation,” the ability to produce a number of high-value products at the same time. This ability helps a facility increase its efficiency and improve the economics of its operations. In addition to the primary products, the principal byproducts of gasification (sulfur and slag) are readily marketable.
5. Lower CO2 management costs.
Gasification can manage CO2 at lower costs than conventional technologies. Gasification plants can capture and compress CO2 at half the cost of a traditional pulverized coal plant, and other gasification-based options, including production of motor fuels, chemicals, fertilizers, or hydrogen, have even lower carbon capture and compression costs (See Figure 1).
Figure 1
Carbon Management Costs of
Gasification vs. Other Technologies
b. Environmental Benefits Gasification is an environmental solution to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power generation and manufacturing.
1. Less air pollution than combustion.
Gasification plants produce significantly lower quantities of criteria air pollutants, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2
Air Emissions: Gasification vs. Combustion
2. Aids in waste disposal.
Gasification can reduce the environmental impact of waste disposal because it can use waste products as feedstocks—generating valuable products from materials that would otherwise be disposed as wastes.
3. Safe, useful byproducts.
The byproducts of gasification are non-hazardous and are readily marketable.
4. Reduced water consumption.
Gasification plants use significantly less water than traditional coal-based power generation, and can be designed so they recycle their process water, discharging none into the surrounding environment.
5. Waste CO2 can be captured.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) can be captured from an industrial gasification plant using commercially proven technologies.
6. Cleanest, most efficient, according to the US Department of Energy.
Gasification offers the cleanest, most efficient means of producing electricity from coal and the lowest cost option for capturing CO2 from power generation, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
7. Products reduce transportation fuel emissions.
Transportation fuel products of gasification can significantly reduce emissions compared to traditional fuels. (Source: gasification.org) Cellulosic ethanol reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 90%, according to the US Dept of Energy. (See Figure 3)(Source: Iogen.)
Figure 3
FT Fuel Vehicle Emission Reductions
2. Current State of Gasification
Gasification has been reliably used on a commercial scale worldwide for more than 50 years by the chemical, refining, and fertilizer industries and by the electric power industry for more than 35 years. Currently, there are more than 140 gasification plants—with more than 420 gasifiers—operating worldwide. Nineteen of those gasification plants are located in the United States.
The Potential Market for Gasification
A number of factors contribute to a growing interest in gasification, including volatile oil and natural gas prices, more stringent environmental regulations, and a growing consensus that CO2 management will likely be required in power generation and energy production. The use of gasification is expanding. Several gasification projects are under development to provide steam and hydrogen to upgrade synthetic crude in the oil sands industry in Canada. In addition, the paper industry is exploring how gasification can be used to make their operations more efficient and reduce waste streams.
Worldwide gasification capacity is projected to grow 70 percent by 2015 (as shown in Figure 4), with 80 percent of the growth occurring in Asia. The prime movers behind this expected growth are the chemical, fertilizer, and coal-to-liquids industries in China, oil sands in Canada, polygeneration (hydrogen and power or chemicals) and substitute natural gas in the United States, and refining in Europe.
Figure 4
Expected World Syngas Capacity Growth
As shown In Figure 5, the gasification industry is expected to grow significantly in the United States despite a number of challenges, including rising construction costs and uncertainty about policy incentives and regulations.
Figure 5
Locations of Proposed Gasification Plants
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