WorldWide Drilling Resource®

42 JULY 2020 WorldWide Drilling Resource ® Searching for the Next Generation of Coal Power Plants Adapted from Information by the U.S. Department of Energy The U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Fossil Energy announced its intentionto commit approximately $81 million in federal funding for cost-shared research and development projects for the advancement of first-of-a-kind coal gen- eration technologies. DOE’s Coal FIRST (Flexible, Innovative, Resilient, Small, Transformative) initiative will develop the coal plant of the future necessary to provide the country with secure, stable, and reliable energy. Deploying these new ultramodern coal plants will re- quire a different way of thinking. The draft funding opportunity announcement (FOA), Design Development and System Integration Design Studies for Coal FIRST Concepts (DE-FOA-0002180), has been issued so those who are interested are aware of the agency’s intention to issue a final FOA later this summer. Coal FIRST plants will be capable of flexible operations to meet the changing needs of the grid and transportation sector while utilizing innovative and cutting-edge compo- nents to improve efficiency and reduce emissions. Coal plants of the future will also be small compared to today’s utility-scale coal-fired plants. It will also transform how coal technologies are designed and manufactured. Some designs will also provide hydrogen to support transportation and industrial applications. The projects awarded funding will complete design development; host site evaluation and environmental information vol- ume; conduct an investment case analysis; and create a system integration design study for an engineering-scale prototype of one of the following concepts: J Flexible Ultra Supercritical (USC) Coal-Fired Power Plant J Pressurized Fluidized Bed Combustor with Supercritical Steam Cycle Power Plant J Hybrid Natural Gas Turbine / USC Coal Boiler Power Plant J Flexible Gasification of Coal & Biomass to Generate Electric Power and a Carbon-Free Hydrogen Co-Product Changes to the electricity-generating industry are creating a shift in how the nation’s power-generating resources are being used. Enhanced coal-fired power plants are becoming increasingly relied on to support the intermittent electricity gen- erated from renewable sources, and to provide critical supplementary power to the grid. These changes are expected to persist into the next decade and beyond. MIN