W. James O'Brien Associates

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This editorial work provides an overview of where the coal industry now stands in line with existing “blue hydrogen” priorities and green governmental mandates. Insight is provided through examples using existing power plants as to how carbon utilization impacts power plant and refinery bottom lines. A new methanol transport fuel section is added to reflect methanol as a rational near-term and transitional alternative to electric vehicle propulsion.

This revision is anticipated to be available for purchase not later than 23 May 2023.

This single volume consolidates “Coal Indirect Liquefaction Via Power Plant Waste Heat” as separate chapters into the above to avoid duplication of significant parts of both present volumes.

1. Liquefaction of coal, biomass and MSW via indirect & direct pyrolysis

2. Power plant cooling system conversion to provide process heat for CO2 derived chemical manufacture

3. Various conversion arrays for eliminating waterway and riverine heat pollution through retrofit of H2+O2-providing electrolyzers while applying alternative heat-transfer media for provision of process heat via heat exchangers, and

4. Process yield tables of chemical feedstock from retrofit mini-refineries.

McCoy Power Reports provide all the latest good news on global power plant development & construction according to green design and contracting principles.

Excerpted from .PDF page 74 of the Report “Technoeconomic Analysis of Product Diversification Options for Sustainability of the Monticello and Prairie Island Nuclear Power Plants, November 2021”

BOTTOM LINE: through using waste heat from cooling a 1 GW nuclear power plant instead of rejecting it to atmosphere or to a lake or river, roughly $750 million per year in H2 sales at the current wholesale market price $1.50/kg FOB at the pipeline tie-in could theoretically be realized.

A 1 GW power plant typically grosses $650-780 million in electrical sales per year. With the waste heat driving a chemical refinery providing a broad range of chemical feedstocks, these numbers could be jinked up an additional 50% to 75% given a thorough market analysis, chemically-prototyped product design plus a pilot plant, logistical planning and proper contractual arrangements.

Yes, supplementary firing will be required in the form of gas-fired steam superheater or better still a Benton boiler. 900 degrees C. is when the magic of chemistry kicks in.

Nothing says a dauntless entrepreneur cannot do the same with a combined-cycle gas turbine plant or conventional coal plant either. Hydrocarbon feedstock to the chemical plant? Captured CO2, naturally plus H2 via the electrolytic process described in the Idaho National Laboratory document given above. For conventional plants a retrofitted electrolytic process plant is also needed to be added plus the fired steam superheater.

The fired steam superheater function is to be supplied by the generated hydrogen, chemical plant-supplied methane or methanol and/or by industrial-scale microwave methods.