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Dutch IGCC pioneers chalk up pain and gain Emergency response is behind schedule in the European public sector A new refining industry in Europe's Asian Corridor Commission proposes milestone energy proposal Replace fuel oil with distillate? Cancelled projects will sustain margins “Marine distillate not fuel oil from 2010” Branson's biofuels megastore You heard it here first: refinery CO2 storage a reality in Norway Buncefield 2: Investigation critical Where now for Swedish Class 1 diesel My slow awakening to climate change The luckiest motorist alive Safety row goes on over Europe's largest LNG terminal New WHO guidelines on city air quality put focus on diesel Would LNG really 'evaporate harmlessly' in an accident? Another lesson in the thermobaric bomb Spare a thought for the oil-rich But will the good times keep on rolling? Carbon storage and the zero emissions refinery Everything just changed E85 and high octane gasolines The problem of small-minded young engineers New Permit Regulations Biodiesel newbuilds and a new green superfuel Spilled wine and our split industry Drilling down into the prospects for IGCC The beginning of the start of the end of oil | Drilling down into the prospects for IGCC Last month I went off into some blue skies thinking about the energy shortfall, gasification, hydrogen and CO2 capture and storage. This month I want to grab the string on that balloon and pull it down to earth a little. There’s a lot of promise and a lot of interest in gasification right now, but what are the issues? And why spend all that money? It seems to make sense in the US, but what about here in Europe? I also said last month that I’d introduce to an enthusiast who believes you can make a case for adding an IGCC to every refinery in the UK. Well, his public relations department gave him cold feet so you’ll just have to take it from me instead. He and I’d been discussing power and the way the word nuclear is popping up more and more often these days. With its chief scientist, David King, in the vanguard, the British government seems to be lining up behind a revival of the floundering UK atomic industry. There’s a similar debate in elsewhere in Europe too, although it’s still hard to see how any of the governments concerned will be able to overcome public resistance. It’s only 20 years since the Ukrainians irradiated us all. Nevertheless, there are serious energy security concerns in Europe now, and especially concerns about producing energy without the various emissions of conventional coal or fuel oil generation. So we were discussing how, for a fraction of the cost of restarting the nuclear industry, you could put an IGCC at every refinery in the UK. But why gasify coal, coke or heavy fuel resids when you’ve got natural gas on your doorstep? Well, it’s certainly true that there is a lot of gas in Europe. However, the dash for gas-turbine power stations has been so marked in the UK at least, that there’s now a queasy feeling in government about our dependence on gas. Almost 50% of UK power, for example, is from gas. Gas pricing has been volatile, and declining production will leave the UK a net importer of natural gas from this year. As imports begin to play a larger role, Russian gas is seen as filling the gap. So the situation isn’t as dramatic as in the US, where gas generation capacity is actually sitting idle due to the high natural gas prices, but it’s still a concern. Nuclear power, meanwhile, is getting a makeover as an environmentally friendly choice, due to its low carbon emissions. But, the history of the nuclear industry is a seemingly bottomless pit of financial crises and public funding. Eight UK refineries (Conoco at Humber already has gasification) could generate 400MW of electricity each, equivalent to two or three new nuclear power stations. Italy has set a precedent with state subsidies to its own IGCC projects, but it’s hard to see the UK doing that. No, the economics of refinery IGCC projects are going to depend on a lousy heavy fuels market, a need for power, for more distillate or a market for hydrogen or other petchem feeds. The power industry itself can of course apply IGCC to coal. And there’s a lot happening in this area. General Electric has bought Texaco’s technology licensing operation. It’s the other major licensor in the market besides Shell. Shell itself has licenced 12 projects which are under construction in China. Several UK projects have received planning permission recently, including Drymm in Wales and Hatfield in Yorkshire. The immediate benefit where IGCC coal generation is concerned there is that it’s so clean. From the syngas you can remove 99% of the sulphur, emit much less Nox from the boiler and far less particulate emissions. All these emissions are increasingly constrained. And then there’s CO2. It’s considered that IGCC for coal offers the cheapest route to no carbon power generation. The massive costs of scrubbing flu gas of CO2, makes the new technologies for CO2 capture and underground storage in salt aquifers relatively attractive. Dutch power company Nuon has actually shown that its 250MW coal IGCC is cleaner than comparable gas-fired power stations. For refiners its more complex, says a major oil engineer with an interest in IGCC matters. “The question is do they need more hydrogen, can they sell to bunkers, what are the specs, what crude do they take in, and so on,” he says. “If they have north sea sweet crude, you don’t have a problem, but if you have high sulphur crude then it’s more difficult.” For the new IGCC project at Grupa Lotos’ Gdansk refinery in Poland, the drivers are power and hydrogen. But also they’re close to regions where marine sulphur levels are being capped. The bunker outlet has been severely limited. Existing IGCC projects at European refineries show how the economics have so far relied on the site being located in a dense industrial complex. Germany’s Ruhrgebeit industrial region is home to BP’s pacesetting Gelsenkirchen-Scholven refinery with its Ammonia/Methanol unit. While the IGCC at Shell’s 21mtpy Pernis site is located in the midst of the Europort petchems centre in the Dutch coast. ERG and Mission Energy’s jointly owned ISAB Energy runs the IGCC power plant at ERG’s Priolo refinery on the key Mediterranean refining hub of Sicily. While, Europe’s second largest refinery at Sarroch in Sardinia is home to the world’s largest IGCC, the Sarlux plant. I wrote about the so-called hydrogen economy last month, and in retrospect it was probably a red herring to connect hydrogen from IGCC’s with fuel cell cars. Steam reforming of natural gas ought to be the way to provide hydrogen for transport (if any demand ever shows up). But long, long-term, there’s a lot more coal than natural gas around, so it shouldn’t be ruled out. A final point. They seem to get on with their business rather quietly, but the Japanese refining industry has historically been quietly ahead of Europe and the US in many respects. To address their challenges finding a market for vacuum residue, they commissioned in 2003 the country’s first resid-fed IGCC. It disposes of over 1,000,000 tpy of resids and produces 551 MW of electricy. • Tim Lloyd Wright has edited refining publications, chaired international downstream meetings and reported for UK newspapers and BBC Radio. | |||||||
Download Energy Industry Resumé with work samples Profile: Tim Lloyd Wright MA Here you'll find a brief profile of my work with international energy, transport and associated environmental issues. Energy trends articles You heard it here first: refinery CO2 storage a reality in Norway From the archive... Over-processed fuel leaves oil tankers adrift | ||||||||
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