Economics of fuel gas from coal: an update including the British Gas Corporation's slagging gasifier. Final report

This report presents the results of an economic screening study for British Gas Corporation's oxygen-blown, slagging, coal gasification process to produce intermediate Btu fuel gas, and an update of the economic sections of an earlier report (EPRI AF-244) which included air and oxygen blown Lurgi moving bed, U-Gas fluidized bed and Combustion Engineering's entrained processes for fuel gas production. This report for Case MXS extends the work covered in EPRI AF-244 to include the moving bed slagging ash gasifier. All of the processes investigated produce fuel gas which could be used in fossil fired power plants. This evaluation was based on a complete ''grass roots'' facility sized to conform to present electric utility practice of building units of approximately 1000 MW capacity. The conclusion reached in this supplement report is that, within the accuracy of the study, fuel gas costs projected for the moving bed process, using the BGC slagging gasifier, are competitive with costs projected in earlier studies based on fluidized bed and entrained processes. The major assumption underlying this conclusion is that the BGC slagging gasifier will operate successfully on a commercial scale in exactly the same manner as is represented by the performance estimates used for this study. It is recommended that further development is required to obtain better data to confirm the cost projections reported here. If such pilot plant data confirms these cost projections further, development of the slagging gasifier should be encouraged.