Cost benefits associated with the use of physically cleaned coal. Final report May 78-Nov 79

The report identifies and quantifies several benefits associated with the use of physically cleaned coal in the operation of utility electric power plants. The benefits occur in: coal and ash handling, boiler operation, and gas handling and cleaning. Cleaning removes sulfur from the coal, thus reducing the emission of SO2 into the atmosphere. In most cases, however, the power plant must install supplemental control equipment to reduce emissions enough for compliance with environmental regulations. The cost of this supplemental equipment is less than the cost of a control system for use with uncleaned coal, but the cost decrement is usually insufficient to offset coal cleaning costs. Typically, however, the total of all benefits addressed in the report exceeds the cost of cleaning the coal. In a typical case, the cost of coal cleaning is $4.85 per ton of cleaned coal; whereas, total benefits associated with cleaning the coal are $7.20 per ton of cleaned coal. The report recommends additional projects aimed at quantifying coal cleaning benefits, and presents an annotated bibliography of related studies.