Re: Research Topics

[FMurrl@aol.com]

In a message dated 4/21/02 3:07:02 AM Eastern Daylight Time, kchisholm@ca.inter.net writes:


> In addition to its fossil carbon content, it also has a significant sulphur
> and ash disposal cost. This is just a wild guess on my part, but the guess
> is that the price of natural gas in large quantities is very close to the
> cost of coal energy plus the cost of sulphur and ash disposal.


A couple of thoughts on this:

Coal is widely available delivered to power plants in the US at prices less than $1.30/MMBtu, while gas comes in now at just over US$3.00/MMBtu with some additional cost for delivery. 12 months ago or so, gas was at $10/MMBtu. Four months ago, $2/MMBtu. 

Natural gas can't be easily used in an existing coal-fired plant, so just switching to gas is not an answer in itself, even if you assumed that enough gas was available to fire coal-fired units -- a bad assumption, in the US, at least. 

Disposing coal ash and controlling sulfur has not taken the total delivered price of power of coal plants above that of gas plants in situations where gas is at or above US$2.70/MCF. 

On the other hand, biomass can be burned in many coal-fired plants, and even more will be usable once we can control the bad actors of many biomass fuels, such as alkalinity, phosphates and some heavy metals (in some sewage and feedlot waste). 

Fred Murrell
Biomass Development
Bradenton Florida USA