Coal Center of Excellence

High-Value Products from Coal

NETL's research in this area uses coal to manufacture high-tech products that cannot easily be produced using conventional approaches. Examples include carbon materials used in computer microelectronics, graphite, carbon electrodes used in batteries and supercapacitors, and carbon additives that improve the strength and durability of metal alloys, cement and other structural materials. NETL's research efforts are among the first in the world to demonstrate how coal can be used for manufacturing advanced materials and products. This research also provides scientific and technoeconomic information on how these products can be made at a commercial scale.

Coal and Carbonaceous Feedstock Conversion

NETL's Reaction Analysis & Chemical Transformation (ReACT) facility is transforming the paradigm of converting domestic resources into high-value, U.S.-manufactured products. The ReACT facility's unique capabilities include the use of microwaves and plasma to enhance conversion processes such as coal gasification. These sources of energy drive all aspects of reaction engineering research, from catalyst design through reactor development, to allow unprecedented efficiencies, yields, and flexibility to produce the chemicals that are the backbone of the economy.

Gasification Systems for Coal-Derived High-Value Carbon Products, Chemicals and Fuels

NETL's Advanced Scale-Up Reactor Experiment (ASURE reactor) is a flexible, modular platform for conversion of coal and other carbon-rich feedstocks into value-added products such as syngas, chemical precursors, hydrogen, structured carbon, and other hydrocarbon products. The ASURE reactor will also serve as a pilot-scale user facility focused on advancing the technology readiness level of new and innovative thermally driven reactor technology concepts and increasing the pace at which they are developed.

Accelerating Coal Process Design and Development

The Computational Multiphase Flow Science Team at NETL develops advanced multiphase computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models to predict and optimize the performance of fossil energy systems, including next-generation pulverized coal combustors and gasifiers. These CFD simulations accelerate reactor scale-up for commercialization, reduce development costs and risks, and enable innovative technologies to reach the market faster. CFD provides reactor designers and operators with deeper insight into reactor behavior during startups, shutdowns, and operational transitions caused by rapid changes in operating conditions. The National Energy Technology Laboratory’s (NETL’s) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code, MFiX -Multiphase Flow with Interphase eXchanges- is central to the laboratory’s multiphase flow reactor modeling efforts.

Advanced Integrated Energy Systems

The Integrated Energy Systems Facility incorporates intelligent hardware or cyber-physical systems to develop new technologies and accelerate commercialization through implementation in an integrated power environment. This provides opportunities to improve energy system resiliency by increasing flexibility of both new and existing coal-fueled power plants by augmenting power generation with thermal and chemical storage. Using high-temperature thermal storage to minimize fuel modulation during load transients can improve ramp rates by as much as tenfold. Additionally, the Integrated Energy Systems Facility can be used to evaluate the coupling of chemical production from coal with power generation to achieve optimal economic viability. Critical to the success of these transformational systems is achieving optimal control strategies that balance the variable load while minimizing potential generation asset degradation — a research space where NETL provides leadership worldwide.

Carbon Capture for Coal Technologies

Pulverized coal power generation has an important contribution to make in expanding the grid to accommodate the AI revolution and securing the availability of inexpensive electricity to the American people. One way of ensuring the continued viability of these critical assets is modernizing them with new features including carbon dioxide capture for enhanced hydrocarbon recovery. NETL's research on gas separations focuses on high-performance materials and systems development for next-generation membranes, solvents and sorbents for applications including carbon dioxide capture from pulverized coal plants, from coal gasification, and for natural gas sweetening. NETL conducts synthesis and testing of gas separation materials from laboratory scale to small pilot scale. These efforts are closely aligned with industry and include a recent demonstration at a major U.S. Steel facility in the Pittsburgh area.

Coal Seam Prospecting and In Situ Coal Reactions

NETL's four CT scanners enable researchers to examine geomaterials such as coal across a range of scales, probe different subsurface phenomena, and generate detailed characterizations of rock cores. The lab is built to look at real rocks under real subsurface conditions. Most research is focused on understanding the fundamental physics of fluid/rock interactions that control flow in the subsurface for our nation's energy production. Specifically with coal, NETL's efforts focus on:

• Nondestructive characterization to understand the variation, constituents, and potential of coal from a variety of settings.
• Evaluation of coal alteration under in-situ conditions coupled with flow to develop engineering equations to leverage our nation's resources.
• Mechanical deformation coupled with high-resolution and rapid CT scanning analyses to enhance coal preparation processes.