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12 November 2004 - A number of leading US coal fired power generators and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) have announced a new initiative to accelerate the deployment of advanced coal technology.
The 'CoalFleet for tomorrow' initiative has also been created to develop options for managing the carbon dioxide emitted from power plants.
Coal based power plants produce more than half the power generated in the US and there are many leading global economic powers with large coal reserves. The initiative will be concerned with maintaining coal as a fuel source worth sustaining.
Hank Courtright, EPRI's vice president of generation and distributed resources said, "Work must begin now to ensure that the advanced coal technologies can establish a solid track record before large numbers of coal plant replacements become necessary."
Much of the programmes efforts in the first year will be concentrated on accelerating integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology into the market before 2015. IGCC combines the high efficiency of gas turbine power systems with the ability to run on coal and other low cost solid or heavy liquid fuels. In addition, IGCC units have demonstrated extremely low emissions of sulphur, mercury and nitrogen oxides.
Courtright added, "Over the programmes lifetime we will address a balanced portfolio of advanced coal technologies including ultrasupercritical pulverized coal and supercritical circulating fluidised bed combustion, and examine how these technologies will perform with different types of coal."
The technologies developed during the initiative's plans to further understand the capturing and sequestering of carbon dioxide are hoped to be available commercially by 2015 to 2020.
To provide technical oversight and direction, CoalFleet will form an expert working group composed of early deployment plant owners, core funders, government experts, EPRI technical staff, and selected industry experts. The collaborative programme will coordinate efforts, as appropriate, with the research and development efforts of the US Department of Energy and other research organizations.
Participation is open to all interested parties. To date, 18 companies have either committed or expressed a strong interest in participating in the programme. More information is from http://www.epriweb.com/public/corp_CoalFleet.pdf
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