Bangladesh Plans 5,000-Megawatt Project with Underground Coal Gasification Technology

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--The government of Bangladesh is planning to generate 5,000 megawatts (MW) of electricity from the coal field in Jamalganj, which is the country's deepest and largest, through the use of underground coal gasification (UCG) technology.

Bangladesh suffers from a power deficit and cannot guarantee an uninterrupted supply of electricity. To address this issue, the government plans to install an additional 9,426 MW of generating capacity by 2015, to bring the total generating capacity up to 13,735 MW.

The Bangladesh power system suffers from older equipment that operates at reduced capacity and has reliability issues. A shortage of gas has resulted in some power plants being unable to reach their designed generating capacity.

The Jamalganj coal field contains estimated reserves of more than 1 billion tons of coal, but the reserve deposits are between 500 meters and 1,000 meters underground. The government is now considering the use of UCG techniques to maximize benefits from the huge reserves.

UCG techniques enable coal to be converted into a synthetic gas, or "syngas," by the injection and ignition of oxidants through a bored well into the underground coal seam. The coal seam is ignited and produces syngas, which is then recovered through a separate borehole. Syngas is a mixture of methane, hydrogen, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide.

At least four companies are known to be interested in the project and have made proposals to the Bangladesh Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources to install a power plant based on the use of UCG technologies.

Clean Coal Technologies Incorporated (CCTI) (Coral Springs, Florida) submitted a proposal to build a UCG-based power plant within three to five years of signing a build-own-operate contract.

The Mitchell Group (Seventeen Mile Rocks, Australia), which specializes in the delivery of unconventional energy solutions, also submitted a proposal recently to construct an UCG-based power plant. The Mitchell Group's proposal calls for the installation of a 10-MW experimental plant at any coal field in Bangladesh. The company also proposes to install a 400-MW power plant using UCG methods by 2015.

Two more companies, one each from Australia and Canada, also have expressed interest in the project.

In the middle of this year, the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources of Bangladesh formed a nine-person committee to study the proposals and provide a report within a month. However, at this stage no report has been forthcoming.

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