The need for coal is not justified by any form of sentiment but rather by hard facts. Crude oil will suffice for 40 years, gas deposits for 60 years, hard coal for 170-200 years, and brown (lignite)) coal for 300 years. Its reserves are evenly distributed. The former Soviet countries’ resources are more or less the same as those in North America. Europe has the same as China, with Australia, Asia and Africa possessing very similar amounts. Whether you like it or not, the world gets 39 pct of its electric energy from hard and brown coal, 19.1 pct from gas, 16.6 pct from nuclear power stations, 16.2 pct from water and 7.2 pct from crude oil. Only a bare 1.9 pct of world electric energy production is generated by sustainable sources.
Europe is third coal consumer following on China and the USA, the princepal European coal reserves being in Poland, Germany and Ukraine. An additional interesting fact is that while hard coal is produced in Europe mainly by Polish, German, Czech, Spanish and British mines, the number of countries extracting brown coal is much larger and includes Greece, Serbia, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary in addition to the above-mentioned German, Polish, Czech and Spanish mining industries.
Coal is essential in 12 of the 25 EU countries buut no other country as large as Poland is so dependent on coal for generating electricity. The degree to which Poland depends on coal for its electricity needs is the greatest in the EU, but that ensures this country the greatest security of having to rely on fuel from its own sources. Hard and brown coal guarantee Poland electric energy security. It is known that 26 bln tons exist in yet unexploited deposits.
Assuming extraction of around 90 mln tons annually with the present operational reserves, there should be sufficient coal for 30 years. By investing in the expansion of structures to open new parties of deposits in existing mines coal self-sufficiency should increase to 40 years. Four mines will have to close in the next 10 years due to exhaustion of existing operational deposits. A further 10 mines will go so the same way during the next decade, and a further 10 in the next ten years. It is quite possible that in 2040 only 8 mines will still be operating in Poland.
To prolong the life of existing Polish coal mines, the construction of new mines will have to be commenced where unexploited deposits are known to exist and new deposits built and accessed within existing mines. Production methods will have to be designed and elaborated to allow effective extraction of those parties of deposits which are presently neglected for technical reasons (e.g. thin layers, remaining irregular parties of deposits etc.) as well as drafting new unconventional methods of working coal deposits which will allow access to resources which cannot be extracted when using present extraction methods.
The time, in the 1980s, when almost 200 mln tons of hard coal annually were mined has passed. That is why the 21st century must become a period when opinions concerning effective use of such a valuable material as coal have to be transformed.
Coal mining can become the motive force for the creation of new advanced mining, generating and chemical production methods. Contemporary mining will have to become an integral part of energy generating and chemical complexes and that is generating the need for new mining, energy generation and chemical processing specialities. The ultimate purpose is that 21st-century hard coal mines may produce materials for zero-pollution fuels and also chemical materials. Coal may be hydrogenated, degassed, undergo gasification or burnt. By degasification, coke and semi-coke may be obtained as well as liquid and gaseous hydrocarbon products, while gasification will deliver fuel gas, synthetic gas (Co and H2) and SNG – a substitute for natural gas. Throughout today’s world, 86 pct of coal is burnt. 13 pct is degassed while only 1 pct is subject to gasification. Overall, a bare 14 pct of extracted coal is processed by energy-chemical methods.
The Polish national economy currently requires 160 TWh electric energy to increase to double that figure in 2012. An annual 5 to 6 pct growth of the GDP costs a rise between 3 and 4 pct of electric energy consumption. No significant transformations in the structure of electric energy caries used to generate electricity may be expected in the oncoming 20-30 years. Coal will continue to play a central role due to its advantageous features. But even so coal will have to satisfy conditions of sustainable growth which is why social acceptance for mining is so important. An increase in the effectiveness of energy generation from coal fuel leads to reduced usage and restriction in greenhouse gas emission (mainly C02) in processes which use coal.. Even the simple improvement coal quality (comprising cleaning, drying and briquetting) applied on a world-wide scale leads to a 5 pct reduction of C02.
A greater reduction of C02 emission may be obtained through improving to 38-40 pct conventional systems of energy generation by coal combustion in subcritical conditions and to some 45 pct in supercritical and ultra-supercritical systems. Subcritical systems system are already operating throughout almost the whole world. Supecritical and ultra-supercritical systems used in Japan, USA, Europe, Russia and China result in a almost 22 pct reduction of C02. Even greater hopes are aroused by high effective, low emission innovative technologies/ These include Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC), Pressurised Fluidised Bed Combustion (PFBC) and, in the future Integrated Gasification Cycle (IGFC).
IGCC and PFBC operate in USA, Japan and Europe. IGFC is in the stage of feasibility research. These will offer up to 25 pct reduction of C02 emission. Finally, zero-emission systems, though that term has caused some controversy in European debate, since such methods will offer “only” 99 pct C02 reduction. In this area international research is under way as regards trapping and storing C02. A EU Flagship Programme assumes 12 demonstration systems will be constructed.
128 goal gasification plants operate throughout the world today, where 366 gas generators of various designs are working with a total thermal power of 42,000 MWt. Shell, Texaco, GE, Lurgi and Destec led the world in these fields.
The following may be obtained alternatively from 1 mln tons of coal “thrown” in a generator; 500 GWh electric energy, 350,000 tons liquid fuel, 400,000 tons methanol or 370 mln cub.m synthetic natural gas. The synthetic gas obtained by the Lurgi method contains 39 pct hydrogen, 23 pct CO, 27 pct CO2, , 9.9 pct hydrogen, trace quantities of nitrogen and more complex hydrocarbons. Synthetic gas can be used to produce electric energy IGCC), liquid fuels and chemicals, methanol, synthetic natural gas and, finally, hydrogen.. For example, synthetic diesel fuel obtained from coal has a lower density, higher calorific value and a notably greater cetane number than diesel fuel produced from crude oil distillation. In 2002 the largest Chinese mining company Shenghua Group Corporation signed a contract with the Chinese government to design and construct a system for the direct hydrogenation of coal. The first line of the system built at a cost o\of USD 850 mln is to deliver 830,000 tons of low sulphur content diesel fuel and petrol. The next lines to produce 5 millions tons of liquid fuel annually are to be ready by 2010 at a cost of USD 5 bln. Of that sum USD 2.6 bln will have to be spent on a system for direct coal liquidation, processing 5.6 mln tons of coal and producing 3,65 mln tons of end products. A Fischer-Tropsch synthesis system is somewhat cheaper (USD 2.5 bln). A system to generate synthetic natural gas allowing 2.22 bln cub.m SNG to be obtained from 6 mln tons of coal costs USD 2.2 bln., while a system for synthesising 100,000 tons methanol annually costs USD 200 mln.
In Poland the Ministry of Science and Higher Education is implementing a programme “Advanced Technologies for Energy Generation”, the Ministry of Environment is pursuing a “National Programme for Geological Storage of Carbon Dioxide” while the Ministry of Economy has a demonstration programme “Energy generation based on coal – clean coal”. Our imperative target is to join world leaders in this field.