Picture of SVZ Schwarz Pumpe Plant
The Great Northern Power Development L.P. and Allied Syngas Corporation joint venture continues to proceed with the planning to construct a $1.4 billion coal gasification plant near South Heart, ND
. Great Northern and Allied Syngas are proceeding with the South Heart gasification plant and have selected GTL Energy for coal beneficiation. The plant will produce substitute natural gas (SNG). SNG meets the specifications for petroleum natural gas and is pipeline quality gas. The SNG will power gas turbines to produce electricity for the use in the state of North Dakota.The plant feedstock is lignite. Lignite is a low rank coal that is common in the U.S. Great Northern conducted a study to determine the best technology for using lignite to produce electricity and determined that gasification is the optimum technology solution. The project will use seven Allied Syngas’ BGL gasifiers to produce up to 100MMCF/day of SNG.
The project is environmentally friendly. The project will remove the CO2 from the syngas. The CO2 will be used for enhanced oil recovery in nearby oil fields or sequestered in deep geologic formations known to be suitable for long term storage of CO2. The project is designed for low water use and is not expected to impact local water sources.
Construction is expected to begin in late 2009 or 2010. It’s scheduled to be complete in 2012. At the peak employment stage, the project will employ over 1,000 construction and support personnel.
The lignite feedstock is a high moisture content coal. An Australian company, GTL Energy, has a proprietary coal “beneficiation” process to remove the moisture from the coal. GTL Energy’s process was selected for the South Heart gasification plant. This process removes up to 80% of the water and creates a coal briquet. GTL Energy has begun construction of the coal beneficiation plant.
March 24th, 2009 at 12:54 am
I have been led to believe that the GTL energy portion of this project will be completed by 07/15/09.If the remainder of the south Heart project in North Dakota is not even planned to start until the end of 2009 or beginning of 2010, what will the GTL Energy plant do in the interim? (Convert Great Northern’s lignite coal into a more saleable product?) If GTL Energys process as tested by the University of Colorado Department of mining in Boulder Colorsdo and at this locstion continues to have favorable results — Will Northern and Allied join with GTL Energy in other projects in the near future?
March 24th, 2009 at 6:08 pm
Michael,
Those are good questions, but we don’t have the answers. GTL Energy has stated in its reply to the Dakota Resources Council complaint that GTL Energy will offer to test its beneficiation process on coal from other sources and other mines at it’s Stark, ND beneficiation plant.