A cleaner path to coal: The ABCs of IGCC technology

November 5, 2009

The advanced coal technology that’s headed to a new power plant being built near Bakersfield, California — which we described in our story last week – will produce electricity with much lower emissions than conventional coal plants. Known as “integrated gasification combined cycle” technology, it’s already in action in Florida at a key plant that helped demonstrate the commercial feasibility of the innovation. In the video below, Mark Hornick, general manager of the Polk Power Station in Tampa, Fla., explains the technology and what it’s meant for the plant and the community.

The Polk Tampa Electric IGCC plant in Florida uses GE’s advanced coal technology to produce electricity with lower emissions – and helped demonstrate the commercial feasibility of IGCC technology.

While the Florida plant delivers 250 megawatts of electricity, GE Energy is also supplying IGCC technology for Duke Energy’s giant plant in Edwardsport, Indiana. It’s expected to be the world’s largest IGCC facility when it reaches commercial operation in 2012, generating 630 megawatts — enough power for about 500,000 homes. The technology at the heart of both of these plants is a complex mix of chemical scrubbers and systems to maximize energy output. The animation below may make you feel a bit like you flashed-back to your high-school chemistry class, but for those with a techie side, it does an excellent job of making a complex process understandable.

The animation from GE Energy explains how the use of “integrated gasification combined cycle” technology, known as IGCC, can produce electricity with lower emissions than conventional coal plants.

The California plant is also designed to capture up to 90 percent of its carbon dioxide, which would be pumped into oil wells in an adjacent field to aid in oil recovery — and then permanently stored there deep underground. The animated clip below explains how that part of the IGCC process works.

The animation from GE Energy explains how IGCC power plants – which use advanced technology to burn coal with lower emissions – are also designed to capture up to 90 percent the carbon dioxide that’s produced.

* Read “California plant picks GE’s advanced coal technology” on GE Reports
* Learn about the alliance between GE and BP to develop IGCC plants
* Watch Hydrogen Energy’s video about how the plant will work
* Read “GE’s advanced coal technology arrives at Duke Energy” on GE Reports
* See the technical specs of an IGCC plant
* Read GE Reports’ story about Australia’s effort to capture carbon from IGCC plants
* Read Forbes’ story about GE’s IGCC work


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  • Gheorghe Curelet-Balan

    Nice and easy to grasp animations of a complex technological process.

  • Kalyan Mamidanna

    Great Technology!

  • Tenton Horton

    Bully for GE. This looks like our old reliable GE at work !!

  • helensizemore

    Hi my name is helen sizemore i have to babies thats is raze on a miners pay i live in harlan and just wanted to say a few words my daddy was a coal miner and my husband is a coal miner and brothers and brother-inlaw are to and i just wanted to say i think the clean coal thing is crape and we are people that are trying to raze there familys we live payday to paydaywin you take our jobs what do you wont us to live on coal has never hart people so why are you all making big seen out of it just think when up flip your light on or get a drink of water how do you think that happens our coal familys make that happen and they are never had a thank you or anything and when you say win mills they are made out of our coal and like my husband quit school when he was 15 teen and you tell me some one who will give him a job and pay him money that he is making know and if srip mining is so bad how do you think they are going to live now and let me tell you some thing come were i live and live like me and all of us and then you will leave us along coal mining was here long befor my time all i know as a kids let our coal miner raze us with our coal pay we have to has coal on matter what you do so let us be and ill support our coal miners and strip miners as long as this go on and if i was in west var i’d shut the doors and go on a srik and let you all see that we need coal and then you would love our coal miners and strip miners whom ever reads this support our coal miners if you were in my shoes you would think 2 about taken our jobs and for all of them people that go to chruch do you think god would wont our babies to go hurry no so think 2 about what you are doing and whin that time come you will pay cause plant green is not what god is going to look at we all come from the same place and when we die gods only has one place for good people and there are only one for bad peopleand that is hell every job you take from our coal miners thank about our babies i love my coal miners they get down and drity in the dark!!!!!support our coal!!!!!!!!!100% coal it keeps your light on.thank you coal miners wife!!!!!!

  • Matthew Ward

    Please don’t judge all people in the coal industry by the comment left on 11-20-09. This technology looks like the answer to the coal debate. My career depends on coal and hopefully these plants will get approved and under construction all over the U.S. Many people have a poor idea about coal mining due to environmentalists propaganda, reclamation is active and working. I wish the mines would show reclaimed areas to inform the public. Maybe GE should include information from both sides and let the public make an educated decision. Keep up the good work GE.

  • ray welch

    what degrees must you have to get a job?

  • Danny Collett

    When are you guys gonna wake up and start putting T.V ads out on a Nationwide basis about clean coal.. My god the green freaks and climate control freaks are gonna tear us apart if we dont fight back wake up Barrack Obama is hell bent on destroying the coal industry we have to do something all they talk about is clean Natural Gas, Wind,Solar we have noone to stand up to them for coal. I live in Kentucky and very very rarely do i see a Commercial on T.V for clean coal technology. I f we dont fight we are sunk

  • Sascha

    I hope the “coal miner’s wife” comment was posted by industry people because nobody should be that poorly educated! Anyway, why would we not change based on what we know now and what we are learning every day from the worlds scientists? “but I didn’t know…” isn’t a good excuse for your grandkids because we do know what we’re doing and what we have to do to give our future a better chance.

  • Jeff Turner

    I just hope that what gets pumped into the ground does not have some terrible repercussion down the road. If coal can be cleaned up, then clean it up. I would like to see all the mercury advisories for eating fish in my rivers eventually go away, but that aint going to happen as long as coal fired power plants are allowed to turn mercury airborne.

  • Nate

    An improvement, absolutely. The solution, absolutely not. With present technology, Nuclear is the source that the US should pursue, particularly for baseload power. Solar and wind will likely have their place as well, but the efficiency throughout their entire lifecycle simply isn’t there yet.
    GE is also involved in nuclear with their ESBWR being a credible plant for new constructions.

  • Annette O. Bigler

    I am very suspicious of the “11/20/2009 11:54 pm Posted by helensizemore.”

    It seems more like some propaganda of the coal industry. It is interesting that the “pro-coal” postings are so articulate and the opposing view is “Helen Sizemore” an alleged poorly educated individual.

    Everyone knows that clean coal is an oxymoron. If the “clean coal” is created the struggling coal worker families will be tossed aside like so much used Kleenex because they are not educated enough. If GE and other multi-trillion entities had any sense of corporate responsibility they would see to it that the workers that made them rich would be retrained to work in the new industries.

    BUT don’t hold your breath. Not only do the industries not acknowledge “corporate responsibilities”, they probably don’t know how to spell it.

    (I also will be amazed if this is posted unedited if at all. You see, the truth is a bitter pill to swallow.)

  • Steve Hurm

    Why does everyone think that clean energy mean a death sentance to coal? Clean coal to me means a new twist on an old technology. It is true that old power plants are both dirty and inefficient. I say lets replace them with modern clean and efficient coal fired power plants! I am a Boilermaker by trade and I am trying to make people understand that the coal fired power plants you see today are old and inefficient. Clen coal technology makes it possible to solve two national problems (pollution and growing energy demand). By the way, Obama is not against he coal industry, he is anti pollution. See the difference?

  • Melissa Molina

    In response to Annette O. Bigler posted on 12/27. Clean Coal is not an oxymoron, it is a reality. The ‘struggling coal worker families’ will not be ‘tossed aside’ due to clean coal. In fact, if the clean coal technologies continue to be developed and more theories are put in practice it will secure their jobs in coal. Clean coal is not a different coal than is currently being used, it is the same coal going though new processes to control the emissions and pollutants, thus the term ‘clean’. Furthermore, because it is the same coal to begin with, the coal mining men and women will continue doing the same work they have done, without need for retraining as suggested in your comment.
    In addition, I would like to point out that ‘Helen Sizmore’ apparently spent as much time at this website trying to understand what GE is doing as you did. Had she truly understood, she would know that coal gasification and clean coal are great things for the future of coal miners along with boilermakers, pipe fitters and numerous other trades that do and will participate in the building and maintaining of these coal gasification plants.
    I am a union boilermaker and our workforce isn’t waiting for GE to ‘retrain’ us for this ‘new industry’. We are already trained, organized and ready for work. The ‘bitter truth’ is that uneducated opposition is slowing the progression to cleaner coal and more efficient power plants because they simply don’t understand the industry or it’s processes. In doing so, the opposition are participating in the ‘tossing to the side’ workers in the coal industry while they stand idle unable to work because they are waiting for laws to pass and public opinion change.

  • Dave

    If we are going to call it “Clean Coal”, should we call the disease “Clean Lung”. Looks pretty black and sooty to me! When our air and streams are free of coal’s contaminants, I might be able to better stomach the expression clean coal. Until then, it looks like lipstick on a pig.

  • Steve Hurm

    If you want an example of lipstick on a pig, try this on for size “clean nuclear waste” I’ll stick with coal thank you.

  • yiling.li

    very good

  • Tenton Horton

    My brother-in-law has “black lung disease” from years of working and breathing coal dust as a coal-miner. The best thing that we can do for coal miners is to get them out of these mines. I have met numerous former coal miners who now work at good above the ground jobs. They are all so very glad to be out of these dangerous and unhealthy mines. Clean burning coal would not put anyone out of a job…in my opinion…and would likely create new jobs as well.