What is going on in today's energy market? Growing shortages of supply of oil and natural gas; already-high and ever-increasing fuel prices; recent signs of depletion of several major natural gas fields across the world; no breakthroughs in oil and gas exploration; and a rising tide of energy consumption in the Developing World. Furthermore, these energy market dynamics are unfolding on the background of mounting concerns about global warming.

Coal has to play a bigger role in the global energy supply - it is abundant and almost ubiquitous. Traditional environmental unease with coal use is addressed by its gasification. Coal gasification is capable of converting coal into a clean and environmentally-acceptable energy product.

Conventional coal gasification technologies, however, are more expensive than traditional coal use and uncompetitive with oil and natural gas.

The εUCG is the only coal gasification technology which is both completely clean and cost-competitive with oil, gas, and conventional coal. The process has produced commercial quantities of gas for chemical processes and power generation. The gas has been used for co-firing with pulverized coal in coal-fired boilers, and can be used in modern gas turbines with minimal modifications to the combustion system.

Chemical processing of the εUCG product gas can result in its catalytic conversion to methane, distillate liquid fuels and hydrogen - the fuels of choice for existing and emerging power generation technologies. The low capital and operating costs of underground coal gasification lead to low-cost fuels for power generation, transportation and other applications. These fuels can be produced at locations where other sources of energy are not available or viable, since εUCG can extract coal energy in conditions which render conventional mining unfeasible, be it for technical, environmental, or economic reasons.

Since εUCG uses unmined coal and takes place in underground coal seams, it saves on both coal cost and the capital cost of the gasification reactor compared to conventional gasification. The difference is so significant that εUCG syngas, a clean and convenient fuel, becomes also the most cost-competitive fuel on the market today.

Compare:

• εUCG versus Conventional Coal
  
  
• εUCG versus Natural Gas
  
  
• εUCG versus Coal Bed Methane
  
  
• εUCG versus Conventional (Surface) Gasification