I think you need to do a bit more research before claiming one...

I think you need to do a bit more research before claiming one (Russian) article is "most industry standards."

GE, the major builder of syngas-fired turbines says "Syngas has a heating value of 125 to 350 BTU/scf, which is three to eight times lower than that of natural gas." Not >900Btu/scf! Note their conversion to Joules is also wrong by a factor of 1,000. 900Btu/scf is 33MJ/m^3.

As explained in the Russian article, the 'high quality syngas' has been extensively treated with methanation and other processes to increase its CV. Theoretically, you could do the same to this syngas - just filter all the methane out of it, then you have a 'syngas' that's packing 39MJ/m^3. But that's not the point of this operation.

Len means it's COMPARATIVELY high by raw, air-oxidised UCG syngas standards. This has been covered here already since the announcement. Basically, syngas is about the lowest calorific value of any fossil fuel product used for energy. Its value comes in from its energy content per unit cost of production, not its energy content per unit of gas.

Dirty coal stations (brown coal) have CVs around 20MJ/kg, and good quality black thermal coal up around 30MJ/kg.

Natural gas's density at STP is, according to a quick wiki search (corrections welcome) about 0.7kg/m^3, so 1m^3 of natural gas is about 1.4kg. So at 39MJ/m^3 (note MJ not kj) the average commercial grade natural gas, that's 55MJ/kg.

So Australian coal is around 1/3 to 1/2 of the CV of methane.

Syngas has been quoted many times in the literature as having around 1/8 the CV of natural gas when air is used, and up to 1/3 when oxygen is used.

Since we're using air, our syngas would be expected to have a CV of around 4.9MJ/m^3. But as Len announced, ours is between 4.8 and 7.0MJ/m^3, which makes our syngas up to 50% higher CV than expected.

This clearly qualifies as "high quality" syngas.

As I said before, the point for Cougar (unlike the others) is not about how much energy per unit syngas they get. It's about how much energy they get per unit COST. That's the way to the cheapest form of power generation, and that's why UCG-derived syngas is forecast to be cheaper than any other fossil fuel for power generation.

It all comes down to an optimisation problem, which any engineer would be familiar with. You can get higher quality syngas by spending more money and energy on it, but will the costs of producing higher quality gas actually be worth it?

The laws of thermodynamics suggest perhaps not, if all you are trying to do is burn that syngas in a turbine. Spending all that energy to make higher quality gas may actually result in LESS energy efficiency, because some of that energy will always be wasted.

Sorry for getting a bit carried away there. :) It's just good to have someone come and ask some real questions, instead of "Cougar sucks, I give up trying to help all you losers."