SYNTHETIC GAS AND CHEMICALS FROM COAL: ECONOMIC APPRAISALS.

Conventional economic analyses cast doubt on the commercial potential of producing synthetic gas from coal. However, making chemicals via coal gasification appears more hopeful. In this article, economic appraisals of the coal-based technologies closest to commercial reality is based on the startup of plants in the early 1980s, not ten years earlier. The most likely candidates for commercialization are: (1) giant SNG plants, and (2) large-volume synthesis-gas chemicals, specifically ammonia and methanol. Economic calculations for different coal gasification plants are tabulated, plotted and evaluated in terms of chemical plant investment and operational costs.