Brown Coal

To achieve substantial reductions in the CO₂ emissions from brown coal power generation will require a combination of energy efficient drying together with methods for the capture and sequestration of CO₂.  The objective of the Brown Coal program is to improve the understanding of the relationship between moisture and coal structure and focus on the use of steam fluidised bed drying technology.

The Victorian Government has established Brown Coal Innovation Australia Limited (BCIA) to foster and support world class research and development (R&D) to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from brown coal utilisation.  While ANLECR&D’s focus on low emission technologies for power generation is much narrower than the BCIA mandate, ANLECR&D work closely with the BCIA in areas of common interest.

Specific outputs will include:

• Understanding the fundamentals of steam fluidised bed drying including fluidisation behaviour, drying kinetics, equilibrium moisture content and heat transfer. This will enable optimisation of steam fluidised bed drying for application with Victorian brown coal.
• Process integration and optimisation concepts and in particular integration of carbon capture with power plant steam cycles incorporating coal drying.
• Carbon capture from high moisture content flue gases that also contain NOx and SOx species, including consideration of materials performance.
• Process integration of flue gas cooling/carbon capture plant with coal drying plant to increase overall efficiency and allow utilisation of the latent heat that is present in the water vapour in the flue gas.