ABSTRACT
The Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) power plant is a technologically viable and field-proven clean coal technology with several large-scale commercial IGCC power plants in operation. Large capital cost of IGCC power plants driven by the immense size, complexity and construction time prevented the technology from a more widespread acceptance. Even so, IGCC’s favorable emission characteristics (vis-à-vis the conventional coal-fired thermal power plants) and especially its amenability to carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) have so far ensured that research and development of the technology has never ceased completely. Adaptation of gas turbines and their bottoming steam cycles to burning syngas produced by coal gasification is the subject of this chapter. The reader is provided with approximate estimation methods to perform a high-level evaluation of IGCC performance for a given gas turbine technology.
