The Clean Coal Centre was established in 1975 under the auspices of the International Energy Agency (IEA). The Centre’s aim is to provide an impartial and objective information and assessment service on all aspects of coal-related technologies and economics. The service is governed by representatives in 12 Member Countries and the European Commission.
A new report from the Centre, Modelling and Simulation for Coal Gasification, notes that gasification technologies are being developed to provide environmentally clean and efficient power generation from a range of fuels such as coal, biomass and oil residues. Modeling and simulation tools are increasingly popular with plant operation personnel and with contractors to assist with the design, analysis and optimization of gasification and combustion processes and with the analysis and interpretation of experimental data.
This report describes how mathematical modeling can help in understanding combustion and gasification processes and its use as a predictive tool, such as in pollutant emissions prediction. In the case of gasification modeling, 1-dimensional as well as 3-dimensional fluid dynamics models are used. Some assumptions are often made for simplification. For instance, chemical reactions are simplified. The application of mathematical modeling in coal gasification is fairly new compared to that in coal combustion processes. Nevertheless, an increasing number of researchers and plant operators are resorting to gasification modeling for plant optimization, process simulation for training plant personnel, for plant control and for predicting product gas composition.
The Clean Coal Centre has also completed a contract for the United Kingdom Department of Trade and Industry to prepare a Guide to Cleaner Coal Technology-related websites. The aim of the guide is to ensure that the UK CCT industry is fully aware and able to benefit from the information available on the internet. The guide is being published by ETSU. It contains factsheets of about 70 sites of key interest, with an emphasis on their usefulness to those in the CCT industry. An evaluation is made of content, ease of use, clarity, frequency of update, etc.
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