Clean Coal Technologies Workshop

Dear Energy Professional, Dear Colleagues

We are very pleased to learn the Announcement made by Chamber of Mining Engineers of Turkey (www.maden.org.tr) that they will be organizing a Workshop on “Clean Coal Technologies” on 31 October and 1-2 November 2007 at Elbistan coal mine premises with cooperation and contributions of Chambers of Mechanical, Electrical, Environmental, Chemical Engineers of Turkey

We have been advised that the tentative agenda in the Workshop will cover the following key subjects

- Coal, its importance in Turkish Energy politics
- Turkish Local energy resources, renewable potentials
- Coal site planning
- Economics of Elbistan Coal Reserves,
- Coal preparation, Enhancing, Selective Mining,
- Recultivation of coal fields, Plant Recovery
- Coal gasification at site, underground in the mine field
- Coal gasification and liquefication, above ground
- Applicable Coal firing technologies,
- Assessment of existing indirect pulverized coal firing
- New Coal firing technologies, Circulating Fluidized Bed,
- Integrated gasification combined cycle, applications
- Flue gas desulphurisation
- New High Voltage Power transmission applications/ new solutions

There will be also a site tour on the last day for the interested parties.

We all know that the most important electric power generation projects are in "Afsin Elbistan" region where the largest lignite mines are located in Turkey; including almost half of the entire local proven reserves.

Available coal has a challenging content with very poor Low calorific value at about average 1150 kcal per kg, and 55% moisture, 20% ash, 1.5-4% sulphur.

Earlier, Turkish Electricity Generation Public Company has already built two groups of four units, each group with 4X340 (1360) MWe electricity generating output capacity.

These earlier units are tendered internationally. German/ USA/ Japan companies have received the contracts based on their past similar experiences in their home countries or elsewhere.

The budget figures are around 5 billion USD equivalent for these two new different group each with 1400 MWe electricity generating output capacity. Projects also cover coal mine rehabilitation and their operation.

Turkish Electricity Generation Public Company (EUAS) announced that the tender would have been finalized on 31 July 2007.

On that day, although there were more than 30 interested parties who purchased the tender documents, no party had any appetite to quote. We should ask if that is due to lack of credibility in the project, lack of bankable tender documents, or too difficult commercial conditions to meet, missing necessary commercial terms etc.

It is our sincere feeling that it is not sufficient to open an international tender to construct the power plants

It is deemed necessary that we need to have scientific research to find which firing technology is appropriate for our specific lignite.

We need to know how to make enrichment of the available lignite

Which firing technology is appropriate for Afsin Elbistan lignite?

The existing power plants (Groups A and B) are based on pulverized coal firing technology which need relatively higher calorific value plus less moisture. Indirect type Pulverized coal firing technique can be successful only if you lower the moisture content and hence with higher the calorific value.

The 3rd (Group-C) and the 4th (D) groups (each with 340 MWe) maybe designed to CFB (Circulating Fluid bed) although there are very few similar capacity CFB references in the world, and therefore we have the risk of first to try for that capacity plus for that lignite composition.

IGCC (Integrated Gasification combined cycle) firing technology may also be employed. Here in this technology you build a sort of refinery at site next to the power plant to generate "Synthetic gas" from poor lignite and then you fire this synthetic gas in the combined cycle power plants similar to natural firing. Seems to be logical but we doubt if it is applicable for our lignite.

Existing Afsin- Elbistan coal mines are to be enriched at coal site prior to feeding into the steam boilers, it has to be cleaned, screened to free from unburned combustibles, its moisture level has to be reduced at least 25% by prior drying. This is called “Selective mining”. These are relatively easy methods to make the fuel to fire better at coal site,

Each country designs and develops her own indigenous coal firing technology by herself, and they have to design their own plants accordingly. We should start to design/construct our own thermal power plants by ourselves.

We should also appreciate that power generation technology is a very dear, very precious, very expensive issue. It is NOT free of charge, and sometimes it is not even possible to get only with bare money as in the case of your own independent effective/ sound / efficient power generation. You can only get it through your own hardwork by employing your young talents with their latest scientific and intellectual capability.

Therefore we would strongly advise our decision makers in the respective public posts to put more incentive for the research activities in the local Universities, more funds for MSc/ PhD/ PostDoc works, more software and hardware for our scientists, more money for them to spend at site for more research.

Turkish Scientific Research Institute TUBITAK must open a permanent research center at Afsin Elbistan coal site to support scientific works.

Those initiatives/ and further incentives will put more value added high tech into our indigenous lignite development in a sound, cost-effective and logical way. In the long run we can also export our local technology in order to construct more thermal power plants in other countries through our contractors. We can get it through our own hardwork by employing our young talents with their latest scientific and intellectual capability.

Clean Coal Technologies Workshop in Elbistan will create a great opportunity for all interested local parties to investigate the possible/ applicable technologies, to investigate and assess the available intellectual capability of the local human resources. We would be very pleased to join/ support/ contribute to the event, and invite all interested parties to join us.

Your comments are always welcome.