Projects

Felton Clean Coal Project
Felton, Queensland, Australia

Ambre Energy Limited is proposing to build and operate a world-class clean coal gasification plant that at final stage (2016) will be producing a hydrogen-rich synthesis gas for the following purposes:

• Production of 2.8 million tonnes per year of dimethyl ether (DME);
• Generation of 650 MW of electricity using an Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) system.

The Project includes an open cut coal mine that at final stage will provide 12.8 million tonnes of coal per year to the gasification plant. The Project will also capture CO2 (1,339 tonnes per day at demonstration stage) for potential enhanced oil recovery and geosequestration, produce by-products such as nitrogen for fertilizer production, and provide the essential inputs for potential downstream olefins/plastics manufacturing facilities.

This ambitious project is located at Felton, 30km south west of Toowoomba; see figure below.

The initial phase of the project will be a Demonstration Stage (scheduled for commissioning in 2011) involving an 800,000 tonnes per year coal mine and a coal gasifier capable of producing 1,980 tonnes per day of a hydrogen-rich syngas. This syngas will be used to demonstrate a novel low-cost DME reactor for the production of 445 tonnes per day of DME. The unreacted tail gas will be stripped of CO2 and fed into a number of gas engines to produce 51 MW of clean power, 10 MW of which will be used for internal purposes.

There is sufficient volume of pure compressed CO2 available from the project to allow trials of CO2 flooding for enhanced oil recovery at depleted Queensland oil and gas fields, or alternatively, to allow geosequestration trials to take place.

The company will also be seeking to demonstrate the most up-to-date methods for the rehabilitation of mined agricultural land, particularly land which was used for cropping purposes prior to mining, following the model of successful rehabilitation projects undertaken in Australia’s Hunter Valley and elsewhere.

Ambre Energy believes that coal gasification technology presents the best chance of producing cleaner fuels and power from coal, as local pollutants such as those containing sulphur, and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, can be stripped from the syngas stream relatively easily before use. By contrast, trying to capture these compounds post-combustion from a coal-fired power station is an expensive and technically difficult undertaking.