Our collaboration will create a new technology-based option for the nation’s valuable coal resources to continue to serve the evolving modern power grid in a flexible, innovative, resilient, small distributed scale, and transformative manner.
May 29, 2019
BRIDGEPORT, W.Va. – Allegheny Science & Technology (AST) is proud to announce that the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) has selected its polygeneration concept as one of the projects for further development through DOE’s Coal FIRST Initiative. Current development focuses on completing the partnership with NETL and our partners at Worley to finalize our conceptual design that enables coal to meet the evolved demands of modern power system.
AST has partnered with Worley (dba Advisian) to develop a polygeneration platform to advance the objectives of NETL’s Coal FIRST (Flexible, Innovative, Resilient, Small, Transformative) Initiative. Team AST’s approach leverages the novel application of technically ready components being adapted to meet the evolving engineering requirements for maximizing coal’s utility in the context of a modern power system, the evolving regulatory environment, and complex dynamic markets. Additionally, our polygeneration system creates options to capture the benefits of adjacent technology innovation such as: solid oxygen carriers, ammonia-based fuel and power cycles, methanol/dimethyl ether-based transportation engines, and related infrastructure developments.
“We are excited at the opportunity to leverage our experience supporting the transformation to the modern grid and energy resiliency to transform the contributions coal can make to the nation’s modern energy infrastructure” said Dr. Jesse Goellner, Vice President of AST’s Advanced Technology Development Strategic Business Unit. “Our approach focuses on how coal can be clean, flexible and distributed rather than write-off this asset based on the previous ‘large scale’ paradigm based on the current status quo.”
Our system produces syngas through a fluid bed system for drying, devolatilization, and gasification which provides operational flexibility to handle the heterogeneity of both coal feedstocks and electrical demand. The syngas cleanup includes pre-combustion carbon dioxide capture. Desired load flowing and ramp rate characteristics are supported by varied dispositions of clean synthesis gas which may be used in a combustion turbine to produce electricity and/or to synthesize a fuel for chemical-based energy storage. The system responds dynamically to electrical demand by adjusting the split of the syngas feed between the syngas combustion turbine and the fuel production process. The optimization of the split will leverage advances developed for distributed renewable energy resources in areas including: smart controls, edge computing, and real time operational decision making.