Managing innovation

A number of proposed projects use technologies based on coal gasification rather than coal combustion. Integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) systems generate electricity by first converting coal or other feedstock into a clean gaseous fuel that is then combusted in a gas turbine to generate electricity. The exhaust from the hot gas turbine is used to generate steam that drives a second turbine to generate additional electricity.

The gasification process is an established commercial technology that is widely used in the petroleum and petrochemical industries to convert carbon-containing feedstocks to a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen, referred to as synthesis gas.

For IGCC applications, the syngas is burned in a combined cycle power plant to generate electricity.… A key attraction of IGCC technology is that the incremental cost of capturing CO2 emissions is lower than that for a similar-size pulverised coal (PC) plant based on CO2 capture technology.


Thus, while an IGCC plant without CO2 capture is more costly than a PC plant, an IGCC plant is less costly if CO2 capture is added to coal-based power plants using bituminous coal. But many other factors also affect the relative costs of IGCC and PC plants.

From “Coal: R&D to Support National Energy Policy”