LAHORE, June 7: Coal gasification offers one of the most versatile and clean ways to convert coal into electricity, hydrogen and other valuable energy products, say experts while speaking at a workshop “Coal gasification: its benefits to the industry.”
The event was jointly organised by the Lahore Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) and Small and Medium Enterprise Development Authority (Smeda) on Thursday.
In his opening remarks, LCCI Senior Vice-President Kashif Younis Meher said there was no second opinion about it that the technology was the key to success and only those countries would be able to make their presence felt at international level who would adopt modern technologies.
He said: “As the coal gasification is the future; therefore, Pakistani research institutes should focus on giving awareness to Pakistani entrepreneurs about this technology in vogue in the developed world.”
He said it was very unfortunate that Pakistani research institutes had failed to play their role properly and this was one of the reasons of economic meltdown being faced by the country. “Pakistan is currently experiencing its worst-ever energy crisis. The impact of the crisis is getting so critical that our industry is getting on the verge of a complete closure. The irony of the fact is that three decades ago, electricity was generated from hydel and non-hydel resources with a proportion of 70:30. Now the situation has totally reversed. It means that the country is relying too much on gas, oil and other sources to generate electricity. It has resulted in costlier electricity which has wiped out competitive edge in international market and also pushed us to that stage where our future has become skeptical,” Meher said.
He said keeping in view the shortage of natural gas and high prices of oil, the country was bound to explore alternative ways of producing energy. He said though some experts suggested going for solar and wind energy but the installation cost of such projects was too high and unviable in Pakistan’s case. “Luckily, having abundant reserves of coal, we can utilise it for energy production.”
He said according to reports 80,000MW electricity was being produced through underground coal gasification in different countries of the world including South Africa, Australia, China, Russia, Poland, Czech Republic and Uzbekistan. But sadly, the government did not allocate funds in the federal budget 2012-13 for this project.
There was a consensus among other speakers that coal gasification provided significant economic and environmental benefits.
They said that rather than burning coal directly, gasification breaks down coal into its basic chemical constituents using high temperature and pressure. Because of this, carbon dioxide can be captured from a gas stream far more easily than from the smokestacks of a conventional coal plant.
Rather than burning coal directly, coal gasification reacts coal with steam and controls amounts of air or oxygen under high temperatures and pressures to produce a gaseous mixture, typically hydrogen and carbon monoxide. These hot, coal gases exiting the gasifier are used to power a gas turbine. Hot exhaust from the gas turbine is then fed to a heat recovery steam generator (HRSG). The steam from the HRSG is then fed to a conventional steam turbine, producing a second source of power.
Coal gasification cannot only used for power generation but also it can become source of synthetic oil, coal chemicals, natural gas substitution. Also it can be used for development of the fuel cell. Thus coal gasification become member of clean coal technology with other advantages.
Chamber SVP Kashif Younis Meher was the chief guest while Smeda General-Manager Alamghir Chaudhry, Engineer S A Khalid, Engineer Zahid Malik, Engineer Khalid Umer and Mohammad Shakeel were prominent among the speakers.