Gasification trends
- SFA Pacific, Inc., Mountain View, CA (United States)
The traditional use of gasification for high value chemicals will continue where fuel prices make gasification more competitive than steam methane reforming. However, oil companies already have the essentials--expertise, fuels, and financing--to be a dominant force in the new world of competitive energy markets. Refinery-based gasification therefore can be expected to proliferate as deregulation of electric power generation promotes the efficiency and economic advantages of cogeneration and trigeneration. The greatest market potential for gasification in the future is electric power generation. In traditional electric utility applications, the efficiency and overall economics of coal gasification may be only marginally superior to those of well-designed, coal-fired steam cycles having state-of-the-art emission controls. Offsetting gasification`s environmental and efficiency advantages in such applications are concerns about capital cost and the need for chemical process expertise. However, power industry deregulation and competition are likely to diminish the importance of large, new central power plants, while imparting increased value to gasification`s strategic advantages, which include: Gasification`s superior environmental performance, particularly in the area of solid wastes; gasification`s superior ability to exploit high-efficiency combustion turbine-based opportunities for combined-cycle and especially cogeneration applications; gasification`s superior ability to exploit a range of fuels--from natural gas and opportunity fuels in the near-to-intermediate term to coal in the longer term, when natural gas prices escalate; and gasification`s superior market economics and flexibility to create and profit from combined power and synthesis gas chemical applications.
- OSTI ID:
- 460710
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-970146-; ISBN 1-890277-01-0; TRN: IM9718%%292
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: Energy week `97 conference & exhibition, Houston, TX (United States), 28-30 Jan 1997; Other Information: PBD: 1997; Related Information: Is Part Of 8. annual international energy week conference and exhibition: Conference papers. Book 2: Pipelines, terminals and storage; Processing and refining; PB: 284 p.
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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