The bluegas™ production facility recovers almost all of the contaminants in coal as useful by-products, e.g. sulfur as elemental sulfur, nitrogen as fertilizer-quality ammonia, and the mineral matter as useful road bed material.

The bluegas™ process supplying an integrated gasification combined cycle power plant has significantly less criteria pollutant emissions than other coal utilization technologies. In fact, the the bluegas™ process produces very nearly as few criteria pollutants as a pure natural gas combined cycle power plant as illustrated in the chart below.

The emissions rates for the new subcritical PC (note values for a supercritical PC plant are similar) and for an IGCC come from the Department of Energy’s 2007 report titled Cost and Performance Baseline for Fossil Energy Plants Volume 1: Bituminous Coal and Natural Gas to Electricity.  Similar emissions data for PC and IGCC were also available in a National Energy Technical Laboratory Presentation dated May 15, 2007.

In addition to this, the bluegas™ process emits far less mercury than other coal utilization technologies. As part of the bluegas™ process, and in order to meet all pipeline specifications, mercury is removed by an additional step that is not typically employed in other coal gasification processes.

(For further information please see GreatPoint Energy’s Emissions Whitepaper)