Life cycle assessment of heat production from underground coal gasification

Abstract

Purpose In Poland, coal is the main fuel used for heat production. Innovative clean coal technologies, which include underground coal gasification (UCG), are widely developed. This paper presents the analysis results of life cycle assessment (LCA) and material flow analysis (MFA) of using synthesis gas from UCG for heat production. The paper presents the results of a comparative analysis of MFA and LCA for four variants of heat production, which differed in the choice of gasifying agent and heat production installations. Methods Environmental analysis was made based on LCA with ReCiPe Midpoint and ReCiPe Endpoint H/A method, which allowed to analyse of different categories of the environmental impact. LCA was performed based on the ISO 14040 standard using SimaPro 8.0 software with Ecoinvent 3.1 database (Ecoinvent 2014). Umberto NXT Universal software was used to develop MFA for heat production. LCA analyses included hard coal from a Polish mine and synthesis gas obtained in the experimental installations in the Central Mining Institute in Poland. Results and discussion MFA performed for technology of utilizing gases from UCG have made it possible to visualize materials and energy flow between different unit processes in the whole technological chain. Moreover, the analyses enabled identification of unit processes with the largest consumption of raw materials, energy and the biggest emissions into the environment. It has been shown that the lowest environmental burden is attributed to the technology, which uses high-pressure chamber with gas turbine in which the synthesis gas from UCG is burned and oxygen was a gasifying agent. Analysis of LCA results showed that the major environmental burden includes greenhouse gas (GHG) emission and the fossil fuels depletion. GHG emission results primarily from the direct emission of CO 2 from gas combustion for heat production and electricity consumption used in gasifying agents preparation phase. Conclusions In order to increase the environmental efficiency of heat production technology using UCG, the most important activity to be considered is limitation of dust-gas emissions, including primarily CO 2 removal process and efficiency increase of the installation, which is reflected in the reduction of coal consumption. It is important to highlight that this is the first attempt of MFA and LCA of heat production from UCG gas. Since no LCA has ever been conducted on the heat production from underground coal gasification, this study is the first work about LCA of the heat production from UCG technology. This is the first approach which contains a whole chain of unconventional heat production including preparation stages of gasifying agents, underground coal gasification, gas purification and heat production.

RETRACTED: Techno-Economic Comparison of Onshore and Offshore Underground Coal Gasification End-Product Competitiveness

“…In view of the underlying techno-economic study, the comprehensive data gathered during the Polish UCG pilot-test and availability of representative coal samples offer a solid basis to parametrise techno-economic process and life cycle assessment models [13,14]. The present study aims at a transparent documentation of the techno-economic analysis to identify economically competitive site-specific UCG synthesis gas based end-utilisation options.…”

Comparative life cycle assessment of current and future electricity generation systems in the Czech Republic and Poland

“…This is characterized by caution, in the case of doubt this takes into account the potential impacts, this does not accept scientific and political organizations advice, nor the attitude that future problems can be avoided. The characteristics of these perspectives were presented previously (Burchart-Korol 2016). The LCA analyses of energy systems in this work were from a hierarchical perspective (H/A).…”

“…In the literature, there are only a few papers on the LCA for energy systems, including electricity and heat production in Poland (Kulczycka and Pietrzyk-Sokulska 2012;Bieda 2011;Lelek et al 2016;Adamczyk and Dzikuć 2014;Lewandowska et al 2015;Dzikuć and Adamczyk 2015). The literature also contains the results of the LCA analyses for innovative clean coal technologies (Burchart-Korol et al 2016;Czaplicka-Kolarz et al 2014). Previous papers on LCA for Poland focused on analysis of current energy systems.…”

Outline of Ecological and Economic Problems Associated with Low Emission Reductions in Poland’s Lubuskie Voivodeship

“…LCA indicates environmental hazards, helping to choose an eco-efficient installation and it is still at the stage of deciding on the heat source [35][36][37]. LCA has been described by the International Committee for Standardization in the standards series ISO 14040: PN-EN ISO 14040:2009 [38] and PN-EN ISO 14044:2009 [39].…”