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Case Study

Key Words: National Energy Technology Laboratory, NETL, Department of Energy, DOE, Global Warming, PIV, Fossil Fuels, Integrated Combined Cycle Gasification, IGCC, Coal, Vision Research, Phantom V7.1

GlobalWarming

Vision Research high-speed digitalcameras enable revolutionaryresearch into solvingglobal warming through clean use offossil fuels

Phantom V7.1 high-speed camera applied to a cold flow gasification experiment at the NETL.
“NETLis constantly seekingways to improve the energyefficiency and the environmental performance ofcoal and other fossil fuels.” Here’s a shocking fact: according to the United States Department of Energy(DOE), the average U.S. household uses several tons of coal each year with-out ever seeing it! As the most abundant fossil fuel available in the United States, there is more energy available in the coal in this country than in the world’s entire oil reserves. The use of coal and other fossil fuels can be traced back to the era of the caveman; however, it was the Industrial Revolution that brought fossil fuels center stage as the country’sgo-to energy source. With the advent of the steam engine, coal was the driving force behind powering the nation’s transportation sector, namely locomotives and ships. Using coal to produce electricity didn’t come into the picture until the 1880s, but it’s currently burned by power plants to produce more than half of the electricity used in the U.S.Unfortunately, the burning of fossil fuels releases significant amounts of carbon dioxide (CO
-Franklin ShafferResearch Engineer at NETL 2 )into the atmosphere. One of the major greenhouse gasescontributing to the escalating global warming crisis, CO
2 has long been the focus ofscientists looking to develop more efficient and advanced technologies to reduce and hopefully eliminate the gas as a byproduct from the use of fossil fuels. Significant strides have been made over the past 20 years and new technologies are now available which can remove up to 90 percent of CO
2 and 99 percent ofother harmful pollutants that previously would have been released into the air. Revolutionary methods of using coal as an energy source for power plants, including those which don’t directly involve burning the fuel to produce heat, are also now being developed and used. One of these methods, known as advanced coal gasification or IntegratedCombined Cycle Gasification (IGCC), is a unique process that ultimately turns coal into a clean gas which can be used to produce electricity. Perhaps the greatest advantage offered by IGCC is the possibility to completely remove carbon dioxideand other pollutants without releasing them into the air as byproducts. The basics of coal gasification are well understood and coal gasification hasbeen in use for more than 100 years; however,the National Energy TechnologyLaboratory (NETL), part of DOE’snational laboratory system, has been taking a