1. Solid coal gasification provides precondition for clean production and high efficient utilization.
2. Clean up gas before combustion to reduce energy consumption and environment pollution and enhance utilization efficiency.
3. Comparing to other new energies like solar, wind, biomass, IGCC has its advantages on resources total quantity and scale. In recent years, governments are positively supporting the development of new energy, which is definitely necessary. However, the total quantity of solar, wind and biomass are not enough to be used as main power sources. Most of these energies are in the range of 5MW and 20MW, which are hard to form scale economies and protect environment. On the contrary, a small sized IGCC power plant will be more than 100MW and a middle sized will be 300MW, suitable for main power sources for economy development.
4. Reliable, fast start-up, and suitable for peak-on and peak-off shift.
5.Multiple revenue from steam, power, tar and sulfur.
There are three categories of IGCC power plants:
I. New IGCC plants located on the sites of existing coal-fired power plants, replacing coal-fired boilers with high-efficiency gasifiers and gas turbines to form combined circle cogeneration with the help of existing steam turbine. After upgrading, the general efficiency of the plant will be enhanced at the meantime of reducing coal cost and emission pollution.
II. New gasification islands and other equipment added to, and refueling, existing natural gas combined cycle electricity generation equipment. This kind of IGCC significantly, keeping the advantages of high efficiency and environment protection, saves considerable gas cost.
III. New IGCC plants located on greenfield sites. This process possesses the two advantages of high utilization efficiency and high-valued production. It not only adds chemical income, but also reduces emission pollution. In recent years, this process is displaying more and more advantages on CO2 greenhouse gas effect control.