September 2005

Green technology using Indiana coal must power up for future

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Indiana is faced with a major energy challenge over the next decade: the need to generate more electricity while at the same time minimizing the environmental impact of this rise in power production.

The most recent analysis conducted by Purdue's State Utility Forecasting Group indicates that by 2008 Indiana will need to provide an additional 2,500 megawatts of electricity – or enough power for roughly 2.5 million homes – and double that amount by 2015. At the same time, the state will have to meet more stringent federal air pollution guidelines.

A portion of the rise in demand could be met by a combination of energy conservation, wind and solar power, which would certainly improve the environment. However, few except the strongest advocates of these clean energy sources say they can provide all of our future power needs. There is almost universal agreement that a mix of conservation, renewable energy sources and clean-burning conventional generation facilities is needed if we are to meet the growing demand without further compromising the state's environment.

What about clean burning conventional facilities? There is a potential technological solution to both the power-demand and pollution-control issues, a technology that also could help to ease the nation's reliance on foreign oil. Plants that use integrated gasification combined cycle, or IGCC technology, convert coal first to gas and then use the gas to drive combustion and steam turbines to generate electricity. Not only could these plants generate clean energy with Indiana coal, they could be used to manufacture a fuel we could put into our cars, trucks and airplanes.

Indiana already has an IGCC plant in Terre Haute to generate electricity only, and others are proposed for construction by the Tondu Corp. and PSI. These plants produce substantially less pollution than other facilities, such as conventional pulverized coal plants. The biggest advantage of IGCC plants lies not so much in their advantage regarding the removal of pollutants including sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides and mercury. Rather, it lies in their promise of economically capturing and "sequestering" carbon dioxide exhaust, a procedure for diverting the gas into underground pockets instead of releasing it into the air. When, and if, the government decides that global warming is a reality, the effects of carbon dioxide can be mitigated by such sequestering.

But these plants have an even more compelling advantage – the possibility of co-producing transportation fuel and electricity. The gas produced from such plants is ideal for converting gas into a fuel we can use in our vehicles in a process that has been used for years in South Africa and elsewhere. Because crude oil is now more than 10 times more expensive than coal per unit of energy, there is within the United States an ample economic incentive for IGCC plants to consider joint production. Such an additional source of revenue would go a long way toward reducing the construction cost disadvantage of such plants, which is 10 to 20 percent higher than conventional coal-fired plants used to generate "base load" power, which is the primary form of electrical generation.

Purdue's newly formed Energy Center in the university's Discovery Park is working in concert with universities in Illinois and Kentucky to reinvigorate research on the conversion of coal into transportation fuels, this after almost 20 years of minimal interest at the national and state level.

Where could these plants be built? One answer is to locate them close to the coal mines, as is the case with the existing Terre Haute plant and the plant PSI is considering. Another option is to build them closer to where the electricity is used, as is the case with the proposed Tondu plant east of New Carlisle in southwest St. Joseph County.

Such locations near demand points have the advantage of improving the reliability of the local electrical system. Customers in systems that have local generators need not suffer power outages when utilities have to isolate parts of their system to prevent cascading power failures like those that caused a massive blackout in August 2003. If local systems contain their own generators, these generators can continue operating and providing power during such emergencies.

Growing demand for electricity will necessitate innovative planning on the part of Indiana's leadership. A critical element of that plan should be clean-coal technology.

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