What is Gasification?

Economic Benefits of Gasification

Gasification can compete effectively in high-price energy environments to provide power and products.

  • Gasification can be used to turn lower-priced feedstocks, such as petcoke and coal, into very valuable products like electricity, substitute natural gas, fuels, chemicals, and fertilizers. For example, a chemical plant can gasify petcoke or high sulfur coal instead of using high-priced natural gas, thereby reducing its operating costs.
  • While a gasification power plant is capital intensive (like any very large manufacturing plant), its operating costs are potentially lower than conventional processes or coal-fired plants because gasification plants are more efficient and require less back-end pollution control equipment. With continued research and development efforts and commercial operating experience, the cost of these units will continue to decrease.
  • Gasification offers wide fuel flexibility. A gasification plant can vary the mix of solid feedstocks, or run on gas or liquid feedstocks—giving it more freedom to adjust to the price and availability of its feedstocks.
  • The ability to produce a number of high-value products at the same time (polygeneration) also helps a facility offset its capital and operating costs. In addition, the principal gasification byproducts (sulfur and slag) are readily marketable. For example, sulfur can be used as a fertilizer and slag can be used in roadbed construction or in roofing materials.
  • A state-of-the-art gasification power plant with commercially available technology can perform with efficiency in a range of 38-41 percent. Technology improvements now in advanced testing will boost efficiency to significantly higher levels.
  • Gasification can increase domestic investment and jobs in manufacturing industries that have recently been in decline because of high energy costs.
  • Many predict that coal-based power plants and other manufacturing facilities will be required to capture and store CO2, or participate in a carbon cap and trade market. In this scenario, gasification projects will have a cost advantage over conventional technologies. While CO2 capture and sequestration will increase the cost of all forms of power generation, an IGCC plant can capture and compress CO2 at one-half the cost of a traditional pulverized coal plant. Other gasification-based options, including production of motor fuels, chemicals, fertilizers, or hydrogen, to name a few, have even lower carbon capture and compression costs. This will provide a significant economic and environmental benefit in a carbon-constrained world. (See Carbon Capture & Compression Costs.)
  • Gasification can replace increasingly expensive natural gas as a fuel or a feedstock. Read more.
  • Gasification is being used around the world. Read more about gasification economics in practice.