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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 | Dutch pioneers have chalked up pain and gain in IGCC The dramatic rise of Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle technology is an industry within an industry that has found its time. It’s a remarkable and compelling story which we cover in a special supplement this month – Gasification 2007. In researching the supplement I spoke with Dutch power company, Nuon, which has taken a leadership position by building and operating a 250MW IGCC at Buggenum in the Limburg provence of The Netherlands. Now the company will build on that experience by constructing a second IGCC at Eemshaven, 180km to the north east of Amsterdam. Nuon has recently announced that Uhde will be the engineering contractor for the gasification plant. The 1200MW ‘Magnum’ IGCC is scheduled to be started up in 2011. It will be a multi-fuel plant able to fire coal and up to 40% biomass, with additional natural gas generation. It will be CO2 capture-ready and features 3 identical 250MW coal/biomass gasification trains with a capacity of 2000t/day. Nuon examined nine different scenarios of global economic development before opting for the chosen configuration. They mention this in a brochure on their nuon.com website and at one point describe how the company has “amassed extensive design and operational knowledge in the domain of coal gasification technology”. I read that easy-to-write phrase and compared it, with a smile, to the conversation I had with plant manager, Carlo Wolters, Nuon’s regional Cluster Manager for Power Generation.
Nuon Cluster Manager, Carlo Wolters Carlo and his team have accomplished a tremendous amount at Buggenum, in a process of unrelenting on-the-hoof problem solving. In fact, he told me that improvisation was a routine part of the job: over the years, the engineers have made 5,000 plant modifications to get to the current level of efficiency and availability at Buggenum. Here are my notes from that conversation, which ought to be instructive to anyone whose part of the current wave of gasification developments. We started by discussing the process of learning how to run the plant. Carlo Wolters: It was a long learning curve. All the gasification units from our generation had that. In the last few years, we have improved our availability from 5,000 and now up to 7000 hours per year. This year, availability is about 90%. That includes planned yearly outages. Our goal is 7200 hours per year. We think that when we integrate the lessons learned in the design and operation of the new plant we will have a reliable technology for the future. HP: That’s not the kind of dream scenario for a unit start-up which technology companies like to showcase? CW: No, at conferences it’s all about the technology, but in the end it’s really about operating this technology. The devil is in the detail. A plant like Buggenum consists of 50,000 components. HP: You’ve said you’ll work again with Shell technology? CW: Yes. We are most confident with that technology and we can build on our experience of working with them. HP: Does bringing together the cultures of the power and process industries in an IGCC plant present particular challenges. CW: In a normal power plant it’s almost a case of pushing a button and it will start. Gasification isn’t like that. It’s really hard work to get it on line and keep it there. There’s solids handling, gas treating, producing oxygen and also producing electricity. But that’s the easy part. My operators come from the utility industry and they say that operating a gasification plant is hugely different. You should have well-trained operators and in our case it will take atleast four years. HP: That implies a fairly challenging transition for companies that move into IGCC? CW: Eventually you give an operator a billion-dollar plant and the operator has to get on with it. In the beginning before the plant was started we sent operators to Shell or Air Products or even to RWE to get trained so that they knew how to operate a chemical plant. But then there are First of A Kind (FOAK) problems. We get a lot of visits from people. We had a steel company from Caledonia come to see us and they wanted to use gasification for their steel mill. I said, if you do that you’ll need to focus 100% on the gasifying... it’ll need all your attention. HP: Has the effort within Nuon been worth it? CW: Personally I believe very strongly in this technology or I wouldn’t have been able to cope with all the upsets I’ve had these last 15 years. Zero emission power plants, one way or another, are the future. There’s huge interest in gasification at the moment, but a lot of people are hesitating. We’ve shown here that it is possible to run a plant like this in an economic way. It will be the same with the CO2 sequestration. Most will wait until it is a proven technology and then build it.
• Tim Lloyd Wright is HP’s European Editor and has been active as a reporter and conference chair in the European downstream industry since 1997, before which he was a feature writer and reporter for the UK broadsheet press and BBC radio. Tim lives in sweden and is founder of the wingo climate and sustainability initiative (www.wingo.nu). | |||||||
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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