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Concept
Coal gasification
Summary
In industrial chemistry, coal gasification is the process of producing syngas—a mixture consisting primarily of carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen (), carbon dioxide (), methane (), and water vapour ()—from coal and water, air and/or oxygen.
Historically, coal was gasified to produce coal gas, also known as "town gas". Coal gas is combustible and was used for heating and municipal lighting, before the advent of large-scale extraction of natural gas from oil wells.
In current practice, large-scale coal gasification installations are primarily for electricity generation (both in conventional thermal power stations and molten carbonate fuel cell power stations), or for production of chemical feedstocks. The hydrogen obtained from coal gasification can be used for various purposes such as making ammonia, powering a hydrogen economy, or upgrading fossil fuels.
Alternatively, coal-derived syngas can be converted into transportation fuels such as gasoline and diesel through additional treatment, or into methanol which itself can be used as transportation fuel or fuel additive, or which can be converted into gasoline.
Natural gas from coal gasification can be cooled until it liquifies for use as a fuel in the transport sector.
In the past, coal was converted to make coal gas, which was piped to customers to burn for illumination, heating, and cooking. High prices of oil and natural gas led to increased interest in "BTU Conversion" technologies such as gasification, methanation and liquefaction. The Synthetic Fuels Corporation was a U.S. government-funded corporation established in 1980 to create a market for alternatives to imported fossil fuels (such as coal gasification). The corporation was discontinued in 1985.
The Flemish scientist Jan Baptista van Helmont used the name "gas" in his Origins of Medicine (1609) to describe his discovery of a "wild spirit" which escaped from heated wood and coal, and which "differed little from the chaos of the ancients". Similar experiments were carried out in 1681 by Johann Becker of Munich and in 1684 by John Clayton of Wigan, England.
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