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Green process makes brown coal the new black
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Mathew Murphy
September 10, 2007


Hot rocks: coal is processed at Environmental Clean Technologies' plant in Bacchus Marsh.
Photo: Penny Stephens

WITH governments refusing to walk away from abundant amounts of brown coal deposits to meet Australia's future energy needs, a small company in Bacchus Marsh believes it has found a way to make the fuel cleaner at a much cheaper cost.

Environmental Clean Technologies has patented a process of changing the chemical composition of brown coal, which is a high emitter of greenhouse gases when burnt, into a similar version of black coal, a cleaner alternative.

Con Galtos, managing director of ECT, says the Coldry process could cut carbon emissions in Victoria's power industry by a staggering 36 million tonnes, or 54 per cent, if it were fully used by the state's brown-coal power stations.

"Brown coal is one of the worst pollutants as far as coal is concerned," he said. "We can't say we eliminate everything during the process but it's definitely cleaner than it was at the start and no chemicals are added in the process. Adding just 10 per cent of Coldry to the mix of existing brown-coal-fired power stations reduces emissions by 7 per cent."

As brown coal is not as dense as black coal, it holds more water, so it produces more greenhouse gas emissions. In transforming it into a version of black coal, the process curiously adds water to break down the chemical bonds.

The pellets are then heated at 35 to 40 degrees to give them a slight skin, making them transportable. They are dried to the point that moisture is reduced by 80 per cent and can be stored without reabsorbing any water.

The process is not new. Melbourne University researchers produced a paper in 1989 that found that there were advantages in transforming raw brown coal into a class of black coal.

In the mid-1990s the inventor, David Wilson, related the process to experiences in Britain when trucks had passed over wet coal. After two weeks of sunshine the roads would harden and the chemical bonds of the brown coal were altered.

So why has it taken so long to bring the technology to the fore?

ECT's manager of project development, Adam Giles, believes there has been a lack of political will and that attention was focused on other areas.

"Until we got to this stage you can imagine people's hesitancy in backing a horse that they weren't sure was going to get to the barriers, let alone win," he said. "A lot of the researchers had already thrown their hat in with mechanical thermal expression and it was in a way ignored. Now I think the political climate has changed somewhat as well."

The Victorian Government last year granted $240,000 to ECT to help the company develop the product.

"It is ready to go and we have a number of interested parties looking at using it both in Victoria and overseas, in places like India," Mr Galtos said.

The cost of producing the pellets — $20 a tonne — also makes it an attractive option. That compares with the current coal price of almost $70 a tonne.

"It is not clean coal — let's make that clear now," Mr Galtos said. "There is no such thing as clean coal. But it can make coal cleaner and it can do it at a significant cost saving."