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54 comments on Coal gasification in National Geographic

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ericy on March 2, 2006 - 1:16pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top

One obvious point would be that a plant that burns coal and makes steam cannot change output very quickly in order to meet demand.  Thus they use coal-burning plants to provide a base load, and use natural gas powered gas-turbines to match supply and demand.

I guess my immediate question is whether coal gassification changes this equation??  If there were a plant that was gassifying coal and then piping it into gas-turbines to generate electricity, would such a plant be able to quickly and easily adjust the output to meet demand (and thereby eliminate the need to use natural gas to generate electricity)?

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JayD on March 3, 2006 - 12:06am Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
No, coal gasification doesn't change the equation -- and IGCC (integrated gasification combined cycle plant) would be baseload, because they would be so expensive. (I say would be because there are about 5 commercial scale plants in the world, 2 in the U.S., but they are all demonstration plants subsidized with gov't $).

An IGCC plant needs to run and run and run to pay off the investment, and its more complicated to run, start up, and shut down.

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54 comments on Coal gasification in National Geographic

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