The development of Clean Coal Technology (CCT) has become a key issue for the future of coal mining as well as the power and chemical industries. While the word coal conjures up images of mining, the application of CCT technologies rests first of all with power engineering and chemistry, with mining playing a major share as well. Last March, CCT was the subject of a conference in Kraków attended by high-ranking EU officials. The main conclusion was that clean coal technologies could give Poland a major technological development opportunity provided proper steps are taken by science, industry and politicians.
Intensive research on developing such technology was conducted in Poland already in the 1970s. In 1992, work was completed on developing a coal liquefaction installation. The documentation is complete and it cannot be excluded that the solution offered will now be enforced.
The time for science – which should outpace industry – is now most auspicious. The CCT topic has been included in the 7th EU Framework Programme. The EU Coal and Steel Research Fund has given preference to projects related to coal processing and its effective use. Much has been done in Poland in recent months to draw up action programmes in this field. In pursuit of the Strategic Government Programme, the National Research and Development Centre is to announce a competition concerned with power engineering based on coal fuel. This will focus on three basic guidelines: upgrading the effectiveness in power stations as the main premise of reducing CO2 emissions, application of innovative technologies (oxytechnology, zero-emission technologies) and CO2 geological storage conditions. The latter are to be defined by the Chief National Geologist and financed by the National Fund for Environmental Protection and Water Management.
The key to success lies in ascertaining whether geological structures are available in Poland for safe storage of CO2 and whether their number is adequate to the amounts to be stored. Suffice it to say that the Bełchatów power station alone emits ca 30 million tonnes of CO2 each year. That means ca 15 billion m3 that needs to be transported, and that is more than Poland’s total imports of natural gas. Storage sites cannot be situated too far away from a power station (maximum 30-50 km) because of the extra energy consumption needed for transportation. Such a geological insight is not yet available. We have to select concrete CO2 storage sites for the main emitters and that within two to three years. We have some preliminary suggestions of places where CO2 storage could start off, though not at an amount of 30 million tonne a year but sufficiently large enough to gain expertise. The European Union’s CCT Directive defining the terms of obtaining a CO2 storage licence has been a major helpful step forward in this respect.
In the spring of 2009, GIG is to receive funds for the construction of a CCT Centre for testing power engineering and other technologies on a semi-technical scale. Interest in Polish research has been voiced by the US Department of Energy and its National Energy Laboratory which has offered to sign a co-operation agreement with GIG. The major milestone in Poland consists in setting up and start-up of a genuine energy producers’ platform involved in the European zero-emission trend. We are therefore on a good path.