Here’s an interesting piece of development in the Philippine Energy Sector. A local company, H&WB Corp, has hired an agent in the US for placement of its $2.8-billion proposed coal liquefaction plant. So far they have garnered about $33 M already for the project. Coal liquefaction is the process of converting coal, via Fischer-Tropsch Method, to other fossil based forms of fuel (gasoline, diesel etc).
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With a $1 billion budget supplied by the US Department of Energy, FirstGen is out to build the next generation of Coal Fired Power Plant that promises to have near-zero emissions. The first plant is designed to run on a 275MW capacity and will be available by 2012.
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GE has been able to develop a procedure which will make development of Solid-Oxide fuel cells that uses gasified coal as a hydrogen fuel source economically viable. The main stumbling block of this technology has always been the high cost of production of the fuel cell.
The technology touts a 50% energy efficiency of energy conversion, compared to conventional power plants 35%.
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This article is part two in a series that explains into deeper detail China’s plans to leverage their Coal supplies to fuel their energy needs, fight pollution (via gasification) and ween themselves off of foreign oil by converting coal to fuel via liquefaction.
Problems they face during the conversion of existing coal power plants to cleaner burning gasification plants is the steep price in upgrading existing coal fired power plants.
Article here from Technology Review
