Company Report: Clean Coal Ltd
The face of underground coal gasification Clean Coal Ltd has not been around long, but already it is gathering steam in the new and exciting field of underground coal gasification

Rohan Courtney

Clean Coal Ltd was established in 2008

Clean Coal Ltd is gathering steam in the field of undergroun

Underground coal gasification (UCG) as an industrial process is certainly an interesting and consequential development in the back catalogue of energy sourcing. The technique is a method of converting deep seam coals into a combustion gas used for industrial heating, power generation or the manufacture of hydrogen, syngas or diesel fuel. The history of UCG dates back to 1868, when Sir William Ramsay suggested the underground gasification of waste and slack coal in the mine, but the principle existed for a long time before being put into practice.

Clean Coal Ltd has been instrumental in taking the concept of UCG and making it reality, but it was only very recently, two years ago, that the movement kicked off. Founder, Rohan Courtney, takes up the story. “I founded the company and thought the name Clean Coal Ltd was a good name; that was two years ago and, amazingly, we were able to register it,” he says.

DEVELOPMENT STAGE
For the first year or two the company was in the development stage. “That phase involved signing up projects, hiring staff and building up the business,” explains Courtney. The company so far is yet to see money coming in.

“As an energy company you don’t tend to get an income very quickly so we raised funding from a private group principally made up of Britons and Americans.” With such a new area of focus, it must be tough to find personnel with enough palpable experience. Not at all. “Our team at Clean Coal I would regard as, if not the most experienced in the world, one of the most experienced, and certainly in the northern hemisphere,” says Courtney.

Indeed, there is a level of experience in the team that belies the relatively small amount of time spent together. There is a sense that working relationships have developed a great deal in the 18 months or so the team has been together. In that time, the company has signed up a number of contracts, the most prominent being the five licenses it has in the UK, but there are also projects to develop in Asia and other parts of Europe and America.

But what of those projects, and what stages are gone through? Well, in China, Clean Coal is at the stage of assessing the coal there and the geology, following the standard protocol for each project. “You sign an agreement and agree a confidentiality arrangement,” explains Courtney. “You then assess the coal, along with the potential for synthetic gas, and work out how you will use the synthetic gas. Only 29then can you develop the project.”

The projects on the table are widespread at this stage, with two projects in China, one in Turkey, two in the U.S., one in Canada, and the firm is looking at Bangladesh with several others around the world in the discussion phase.

THE TECHNICALITIES OF UCG
So, digging down a little more - if you’ll excuse the metaphor - into the technicalities of UCG, the procedure starts with the ‘basin modelling’ requirement.

This is when Clean Coal looks at an area where it has a licence or joint venture, and has a geological survey of the area where the coal is; assessing not only the depth and quantity of the coal and how suitable it is for gasification, but also looking at the wider geological area, as well as the hydro geological area – meaning the water access in the area. “In a lot of energy activity, whether coal mining or oil drilling, water plays a significant part,” explains Courtney. “You don’t want too much or too little and also you need to make sure that when assessing the impact on water underground, you’re not having any negative impact on water that can be used for domestic consumption.”

Also crucial is the ‘desktop assessment’, which is assessing the geology to make sure the company looks at where it can put the CO2 back into the ground.

“We spend a lot of time making those assessments, then we start some drilling of boreholes and a lot of seismic work. So by the end of the process, we have a great understanding of what’s going on underground,” says Courtney.

Being involved in such a new discipline must make Clean Coal ideally placed to deal with change? “Absolutely,” agrees Courtney. “Everyone keeps on top of any changes and, because of the amount of work we’re doing in terms of assessments and reviews, we spend a great deal of time on the modelling required to assess these projects. Our guys talk at seminars when they have time, so they’re regarded by the industry as people that are part of a premier team.”

But it is because UCG is so new that invariably challenges arise. One such challenge is communicating the benefits effectively to the layman. “If I’m Joe Public and I’m told someone is going to burn coal underneath my house, I’d get a bit nervous unless I knew more about it, so the company explains the process in an honest and transparent way.”

It is an exciting project to be pioneering, and hopefully for Clean Coal Ltd, moving forward, UCG will become a universally recognised technique, reaping the benefits around the world.

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