The suitability of coal gasification in India's energy sector

Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC), an advanced coal-based power generation technology, may be an important technology to help India meet its future power needs. It has the potential to provide higher generating efficiency, can be adapted to efficiently burn India's high-ash coal, and has the potential to do so with greatly reduced emissions and offers the longer term potential to assist India to manage its C02 emissions. Efficient gasification technology also offers India the potential to produce a variety of fuels, particularly transportation fuels, and chemicals. These potential benefits would be useful in a country that has coal shortages, runs inefficient power plants, and imports the majority of its transportation fuels. Driven by these potential benefits the Central Government-owned power generating equipment manufacturing company (BHEL) is developing a fluid-bed gasifier designed for Indian coals, but has not yet demonstrated it at a size larger than 6 MW. Outside of BHEL, there are many factors holding this technology back. First, the technology is projected to be more expensive than pulverized coal (PC) power generation. In the Indian environment, the capital costs are estimated to be 1.5 times higher, and the levelized cost of electricity is estimated to be 33 % higher than for PC power generation.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering Systems Division

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Simpson, Lori Allison

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Richard K. Lester and Ernest J. Moniz.

• Technology and Policy Program.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/38569

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/38569