[ExI] Coal power through syngas

[Keith Henson]

On Tue, Apr 7, 2026 at 6:32 PM Peter Garbuz <peter.garbuz at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Keith, how do you get to 12.5 MWh of syngas?

C + H2O -> CO + H2    Delta H = +131 kJ/mol (endothermic)

12 18           28       2

1   1.5           2.33  .166

(A ton of carbon gives 2.5 tons of syngas, which has an energy of 6.5
MWh for CO and ~6 MWh for H2 per ton of vaporized carbon)

Per metric ton of carbon (atomic mass 12, so approximately 83,300 mol/ton):

Please check the numbers.
Keith
> PG
>
> On Tue, Apr 7, 2026 at 6:23 PM Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> If you just burn a tonne of coal for power, you get around 2.2 MWh
>> ~40% efficient.
>>
>> If you gasify a tonne of coal using 4 MWh of off-peak renewable power,
>> you get about 12.5 MWh of syngas, which you can burn to get 6 MWh of
>> power.  Thus, you can get about 3 times as much energy from a tonne of
>> coal by gasifying it first as you get from burning it.  Of course, you
>> need to put in 4 MWh of renewable energy to do that.  But it still
>> beats burning it, and if you want, you can sort out at least half the
>> CO2, perhaps all of it, for sequestration, leaving cheap, more or less
>> pure hydrogen.
>>
>> Keith
>>
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