Gasification Technology and Its Contribution to Deal with Global Warming

It is predictable that energy demand will greatly increase in years to come, due to the continuous growth of world population, together with the quest to improve living standards. CO

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emissions are hence expected to increase significantly. Gasification is a mature technology for energy production that permits an easier separation of CO

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for its storage. As modern societies are producing everincreasing amounts of wastes with negative impact on the environment, new technologies have been developed to co-gasify these wastes either with coal or alone, thus resolving a serious problem of waste disposal. Wastes gasification reduces the dependence on fossil fuels and co-gasification with coal could provide the benefit of security in fuel supply, as the availability of wastes and biomass fuels could vary from region to region and show seasonal changes. Gasification experimental conditions and technologies and syngas cleaning methods are key issues for the production of a clean gas that could find a wide range of applications. This chapter will concentrate on syngas end-uses, focusing on new ones, like gas turbines or engines in IGCC, synthesis of methanol, ethanol and dimethyl ether, Fischer–Tropsch synthesis, and hydrogen production. The role of gasification in CO

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sequestration will also be discussed.