Moneyweb: South Africa's coal clean-up digs deep with gasification

South Africa produces almost all of its power from coal-fired plants that pollute the air with dark clouds of smoke and fail to generate enough electricity to avert blackouts.

Now, if scientists are right, coal in the future could produce electricity without ever leaving the ground.

State power utility Eskom wants to address both South Africa's supply shortfall and its carbon emissions by burning its vast coal reserves underground to produce gas for more efficient, cleaner electricity.

An experimental technology dubbed Underground Coal Gasification (UCG), which is also being developed in Australia, Canada, India and China, could be especially important for South Africa, which relies on coal for nearly 90 percent of its power.

"It could have the double benefit of boosting electricity and reducing carbon emissions," said Steve Lennon, an Eskom sustainability executive leading the UCG programme.

UCG involves drilling wells to previously unrecoverable coal reserves hundreds of metres underground and injecting steam and oxygen to ignite a combustion process which produces a synthetic gas that can be used as fuel.

Separate, steel-lined, sealed wells are drilled to carry up the gas. MORE