The Kentucky Division of Air Quality issued the Final Air Permit for the Cash Creek Generating Station. Cash Creek is an Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plant that will gasify Kentucky coal and produce substitute natural gas. The plant will use four GE gasifiers to produce syngas. Cash Creek will convert the syngas to substitute natural gas (SNG) using a methanation process. SNG can be transported in existing natural gas pipelines.

In addition, the Cash Creek IGCC plant will operate two gas fired turbines with Heat Recovery Steam Generators and one steam fired turbine. The turbines will generate 760 MW electricity. Some of the electricity will be used for the plant’s own operations and the balance will be sold.

Cash Creek LLC is a subsidiary of ERORA LLC. ERORA is privately held by Green Rock LLC, GE Financial Services and ERORA principals. GE Energy Financial Services has a 20% interest in ERORA LLC. D.E. Shaw has invested in the project.

ConocoPhillips and Peabody Energy have been evaluated several sites in Kentucky for a coal gasification plant while CO2 capture and sequestration has been ongoing. The companies announced before Christmas that the site chosen is near Central City, Kentucky. The plant will be called Kentucky NewGas.

A few days after selecting the site for the coal gasification plant, ConocoPhillips submitted an application to the State of Kentucky for the air quality permit for the project. The project will be a coal gasification substitute natural gas (SNG) plant.

When complete the plant will process about 3.5 million tons of coal per year and produce about 50 to 70 billion cubic feet of substitute natural gas (SNG). SNG is chemically equivalent to natural gas and can even be transported in natural gas pipelines without problems.

The plant will be a mine-mouth plant to eliminate the high cost of transporting coal. It will use the ConocoPhillips E-Gas proprietary gasification technology. The E-Gas gasification process grinds the coal into small particles and mixes it with water to produce a slurry. The coal slurry is pumped into the gasifier reactor vessels along with pure oxygen to convert the coal under intense heat to a molecular gas form. The resulting synthetic gas is primarily carbon monoxide and hydrogen. The impurities are removed from the syngas while it is in the plant equipment system so there is no emissions to the atmosphere. After it is cleaned, the final product is methane, a clean burning gas like natural gas, that can be used to fire turbines and produce electricity.