Several experiments are underway in the world

Clean coal! This is what we promise industrialists and researchers involved in the American programs FutureGen and European HypoGen ($ 1 billion and EUR 1.3 billion over 10 years). Why therefore rely on coal then plants that employ it are among the largest CO2 emitters Issue of reserve available and cost. Coal is the primary energy which has experienced the most growth in recent years, partly because of the development galloping of China, whose consumption has increased by 70 in five years. It is thus urgent to find technologies to properly exploit this resource.

How Capturing CO2 from coal-fired power plants and pouring it into the basement, how to put the carbon source in his place. This solution, today evoked in a consensual manner, would be the only one capable of stabilize term industrial discharges. Several experiments are underway in the world. Innovation of HypoGen and FutureGen is especially capture of CO2, a step key that represents 70 of the costs. "On the existing power plants, we develop technologies to capture CO2 in flue gases, explains François Kalaydjian, expert Director of the sustainable development of the French oil Institute (IFP) direction." In HypoGen, CO2 will be captured prior to combustion, in much more favourable conditions of pressure and concentration, therefore much more economic.

Carbonate instead of burning

Last month, the India announced its participation in the FutureGen project. China has signed early this year an ambitious agreement with the European Union, one of whose objectives is to build by 2020 of coal-fired power plants without CO2 emissions. "From here to the end of the year, with 8 partners, we will start a project called"Coach"to define appropriate capture technologies and identify a site of storage in China, one of the petroleum basins in the West of Beijing", says François Kalaydjian, Coordinator of this three year project involving, among others, BP, Shell, Statoil, Alstom, Schlumberger, Air Liquide...

The other "own" the coal aspect is that it is intended to produce hydrogen, clean energy source secondary par excellence (especially used in fuel cells). How to produce hydrogen from coal In the gasifying instead of burning, a method known since a long time. Coal is heated at high temperature (around 1,000 C) under pressure, in the presence of pure oxygen and water vapour. The molecules are "broken" (and not burned) and the constituents of basic recombine hydrogen and carbon monoxide (CO), a mixture called "synthesis gas". It passes through a second reactor to produce additional hydrogen and CO2. It is this CO2 under pressure which would be stored in the basement.

Gasification also significantly reduces emissions of nitrogen oxide, sulfur and particulate matter. Product hydrogen would be partly sold to existing industrial uses (refineries, chemistry ) or future (transport) and part used in a thermal power plant to produce electricity through a steam of hydrogen-powered gas turbine. The major difficulties of these two projects are the optimization and security of the storage of CO2.

FutureGen provides the construction of a 275 megawatt (MW) in 2012. European side, as François Kalaydjian, "the first phase of HypoGen has just started with the Dynamis (30 partners) project for the first design studies, feasibility and the technical first choice". In fact, the Europeans have not yet decided: If term, coal is the fuel referred to, some call to use as a first step to of natural gas, current path for the production of the hydrogen used in the industry. "We consider this path in the stamp project," says François Kalaydjian, at the level of a driver by 2010, to propose an industrial process between 2012 and 2015. But some have already taken the lead: major industrial projects have been announced (read here), evidence that the technologies are already mastered.