Tag: Fuel

DOE Rolls Out Funding for Turbines, Solid Oxide Fuel Cells

September 12, 2017
| 1 Comment
| Industry News

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is kicking off September with a couple of significant funding announcements. The department announced September 6 the selection of 16 projects to receive a combined total of more than $ 10 million in funding to advance solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology. That announcement was followed up September 7 with the selection of nine projects to receive a combined total of $ 5.4 million under the University Turbine Systems Research (UTSR) program.

SOFC Award

The 16 projects selected under the SOFC award “will address the technical issues facing the cost and reliability of SOFC technology and conduct field testing of an integrated prototype system project intended to validate the solutions to those issues,” according to a DOE press release.

The projects fall under two categories, prototype system testing and core technology development.

Only one project was selected under the prototype system testing topic area. Receiving total funding of $ 7.1 million, LG Fuel Cell Systems will deploy a 250-kW integrated fuel cell system in North Canton, Ohio.…

Read More »

Coal Fuel Contracts: A Moving Target

January 28, 2017
| No Comments
| Industry News

In recent years, coal power generators have faced increasing difficulty predicting annual fuel requirements due to more cycling and low-load operation. That presents problems for the people negotiating fuel contracts. Not all mining companies are amenable to contract changes, but some unique solutions have been developed.

Remember when coal-fired power plants supplied baseload power 24/7/365 (when they were not offline for scheduled maintenance)? It seems like ages ago. Nowadays, load is as unpredictable as the weather, which is to say, if the sun is shining or the wind is blowing, renewable resources are often putting a crimp in coal-fired generation.

But renewable energy isn’t the only thing pushing coal plants to the sidelines; low-cost natural gas has played a role as well. Consequently, some gas turbines previously used as peaking units are now being dispatched for baseload power. That has meant various coal units have had to run at reduced loads or even to shut down for “economy” from time to time.…

Read More »

Global Nuclear Fuel Update

January 26, 2017
| No Comments
| Industry News

Uranium oxide, the basic fuel for nuclear power plants, has recently sold at prices not seen in the past 13 years. In fact, the price is less than the cost of production in many cases. That could be a problem, because little is being done to increase the fuel supply, even though the world is adding new and larger reactors.

Late last year, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s Nuclear Energy Agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency released a joint 550-page report titled Uranium 2016: Resources, Production and Demand. It was the 26th edition of the now-biennial report, commonly referred to as the Red Book,with data current as of January 1, 2015.

One potentially concerning revelation was that total identified uranium resources had only increased by 0.1% since the previous report had been issued. A reason cited for the minuscule uptick was that very little investment had been made in exploration due to depressed uranium market conditions.

Indeed, the price for uranium oxide (U3O8) has been in a death spiral (Figure 1).…

Read More »

DOE’s First Advanced Fossil Fuel Loan Guarantee Commitment Awarded to Methanol Plant with Carbon Capture

December 25, 2016
| No Comments
| Industry News

The Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) first loan guarantee under an $ 8 billion solicitation for advanced fossil energy projects may go to a methanol production facility in Lake Charles, La., that will employ carbon capture technology for enhanced oil recovery.

The DOE said in a statement on December 21 that it offered a conditional commitment to guarantee loans of up to $ 2 billion to help build the facility. If built, the facility will be the world’s first methanol production facility to use carbon capture technology. It would also be the first facility in the U.S. to derive methanol from petroleum coke (petcoke), which is a byproduct of oil refining.

The proposed plant will produce methanol, hydrogen, and other industrial gases and chemical products using petcoke as a feedstock. It proposes to capture 77% of carbon dioxide from the petcoke gasification plant. The gas will then be compressed and transported to oilfields in Texas for enhanced oil recovery.

The DOE’s solicitation issued in December 2013 under Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 sought applications for loan guarantees to finance U.S.…

Read More »

Paducah Laser Nuclear Enrichment Facility Gets Fuel but Not Formal Construction Decision

November 12, 2016
| No Comments
| Industry News

While GE-Hitachi Global Laser Enrichment (GLE) confirmed it hasn’t made a formal decision to proceed with licensing or construction of a laser enrichment facility at Paducah, Ky., the Department of Energy (DOE) announced it has agreed to sell depleted uranium to the company over a 40-year period to help produce nuclear power plant fuel.

The DOE said that GLE would finance, construct, own, and operate the Paducah Laser Enrichment Facility proposed for a site near the DOE’s Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant in western Kentucky. The commercial facility is expected to use, under a Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) license, depleted uranium to produce natural uranium, which will then be used for production of fuel for U.S. civil nuclear reactors. The agreement provides for the sale of about 300,000 metric tons of DOE-owned high-assay uranium hexafluoride (DUF6) inventories for re-enrichment using proprietary SILEX technology to produce natural-grade uranium.

Yet, as a GE Power spokesperson told POWER on November 11, GLE “has made no formal decision to proceed with licensing or construction of the facility.”…

Read More »

EnergyNorthwest.com 2025 . Powered by WordPress