Development Status of Gasification/Melting Technology for Energy and Environmental Applications

Increasing environmental concerns regarding the combustion-based coal-utilization and waste treatment technologies have prompted the development and application of gasification processes that produce far less pollutants like SOx, NOx and dioxins while recovering energy mainly as a chemical energy of CO and hydrogen. In Korea, coal needs to make up at least 1/3 of total generated electricity while waste incineration faces many challenges in convincing its environmental cleanness, especially with respect to dioxins and possibility of heavy metal leaching from the combustion ash. During the last decade, IAE has prepared the application possibilities of gasification process into coal and wastes in that process cost and system availability were the main obstacles for commercialization. In this paper, current development status of gasification research using coal and wastes is discussed