Report 1: Review of HyperCoal, Ultra Clean Coal and Rotating Kiln Technologies - January 2007 Report 2: Ultra Clean Coal Use in Diesel Engines - September 2008

In January, 2007 Connell Wagner completed a report which reviewed Hyper Coal, Ultra Clean Coal (UCC) and Rotating Kiln technology (Report 1).  An extension to the earlier work was requested by ACARP to address recently published statements on the use of ultra clean coal for distributed power generation utilising reciprocating engines. (Report  2)

Report 1: Review of HyperCoal, Ultra Clean Coal and Rotating Kiln Technologies - January 2007  

This report describes the findings of a review of three potential technologies that may offer greenhouse gas benefits to coal based power generation and underground coal mining operations. Two of the technologies (Hypercoal and UCC) involve removing almost all of the mineral matter from the coal, resulting in a fuel that is claimed to be suitable as a gas turbine fuel. The other technology (Rotating Kiln) has been developed to allow mine vent gas and coal spoils to be utilised for on-site electricity generation.

The ACARP Low Emission Coal Use Committee commissioned Connell Wagner to conduct this review, based on publicly available information, to provide a view on the engineering issues that would need to be addressed if commercial  deployment of the technologies was proposed

Report 2: Ultra Clean Coal Use in Diesel Engines - September 2008

The purpose of this review of Ultra Clean Coal is to address a number of specific issues related to the production, utilisation and greenhouse gas performance of UCC based generation equipment:

· Availability of equipment to achieve the required coal feed size reduction to <20Gm - Health and safety implications of chemicals used in the production of both UCC and UCC / water slurries.

· Availability, thermal efficiency, cost and development time of power generation equipment to utilise UCC. The sensitivity of the life-cycle GHG emissions to the assumed equipment efficiency.

· Discussion of the impacts of the use of UCC in diesel engines. In particular wear rates on injectors and NOx emissions.

In addition, the report addresses a number of issues related to UCC based distributed power generation:

· The relative efficiencies of electricity transmission compared with fuel transport via road, rail and ship.

· Consideration of the production and distribution of UCC at a large scale.

· The relative CO₂ emissions reduction achievable with and without carbon dioxide capture compared with conventional coal technologies.

· Discussion of the practicalities of CO2 capture from a large number of small CO2 sources, notionally remote from CO₂ disposal infrastructure.

The report concludes with discussion of the practical, economic and environmental realities of the use of UCC at distributed power stations.