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Coal Gasification’s Biggest Project Ever – The Kemper County Energy Facility

Kemper County Energy FacilityAmid increased regulation that is strangling the traditional coal industry, a new hope is rising in Mississippi that may bring the shine back to coal in today’s clean energy landscape. Although Coal accounts for nearly 40% of our nation’s energy, government regulation is making it very difficult for the coal industry to continue providing energy for our country. With tough new climate change regulations for coal plants that include reducing carbon emissions and creating strict requirements for new construction, the coal industry has seen serious hits in the past decade. Closures of older plants and halted construction for new plants have caused a number of bankruptcies for energy providers across the nation.

Coal still remains a large part of primary energy and recent EPA regulations like the Clean Air Act has made coal production cleaner and better for the environment, albeit not enough for most environmentalists. The challenge, then, is figuring out how to harness coal’s energy more cleanly in order to address environmental concerns while still exploiting the abundance and cheapness of coal as a fuel.

Coal Gasification Could be a Great Opportunity for the Coal Industry

Coal gasification is a decades old technique but has recently been utilized in an effort to make coal more economically viable and clean. Instead of burning the fossil fuel in a traditional way, it is chemically transformed into synthetic natural gas (SNG).  Coal gasification is the process of producing syngas which is a mixture methane, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, carbon dioxide and water vapor from the combination of coal, water, and air.

During the gasification process, coal is combined with oxygen & steam and heated. It some cases, it will also be pressurized. If heated by an external source, the process is called allothermal. If the coal is heated via exothermal chemical reactions occurring inside the gasifier it is called autothermal. The oxidizer supplied MUST be insufficient for complete oxidation which would cause combustion of the fuel. During the process, oxygen & water molecules oxidize the coal and produce a mixture of gases including carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon monoxide (CO), water vapor (H2O), and molecular hydrogen (H2).

The Kemper County Energy Facility Project

This energy facility will be a 582-megawatt showcase of technology that may spur the development of cleaner coal technology. It is currently the only major clean coal power plant funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and is touted to produce low cost, reliable power for the area’s residents for decades to come.

Industrial Access, Inc. has rope access technicians working in an inspection capability on this huge project in Kemper County Mississippi. The Kemper County Energy Plant is the first large-scale power plant in the nation designed to transform coal into gas and then capture the carbon dioxide emissions with new Carbon Capture Technology and pump it underground. This project may help determine the future of coal in today’s age of increased governmental regulation.

The team at Industrial Access is providing our rope access services for several specific areas of new construction at this incredible facility. We proud to be a part of coal’s future while supporting other emission reducing technology at traditional coal plants too. The industry is working hard to produce cleaner and more efficient ways to harness the power of this steadfast fuel type. If you’d like to find out more about our rope access services and how IA can assist your facility, contact our rope access specialists at (770) 370-7055.

We can engineer a solution for your high access needs.

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