Underground Coal Gasification

Solid Energy has made excellent progress in advancing our Underground Coal Gasification (UCG) project to convert coal directly into syngas while it is still deep underground.

At the end of 2010, Solid Energy received resource consents to build and operate a UCG Pilot Plant on private land in the Waikato. UCG is a technology that could allow New Zealand to recover coal from deep, difficult-to-mine coal deposits without digging it from the ground.

Solid Energy has produced a short video, Underground Coal Gasification (UCG), to tell you about the UCG technology, show you the Pilot Plant, and explain why Solid Energy is investigating UCG's use in New Zealand.

CSG and underground coal gasification (UCG) both harvest energy without removing coal from the ground, but there are important differences between CSG and UCG.

Why UCG?

Solid Energy is investigating UCG in New Zealand because it offers economic and environmental benefits.

UCG converts coal into a versatile synthetic gas product, also known as syngas, which:

• could allow us to convert deep difficult-to-mine coal into affordable energy, thereby making the most of New Zealand's most abundant natural resource — coal.
• could reduce the environmental impact of extracting coal.
• opens up more technologies that can be used to reduce coal's greenhouse gas emissions
• can be converted into a variety of high-value products such as cleaner-burning transport fuels, fertilisers for food production, plastics, methanol, waxes and detergents
• enables us to refine coal into almost pure hydrogen which, when converted into energy, produces only water as a by-product.

How does it work?

UCG pilot plant, Waikato

UCG uses a carefully managed chemical reaction hundreds of metres underground to convert coal into syngas then bring this gas to the surface through a series of wells.

Syngas can be processed further to generate electricity and produce a variety of high-value products like cleaner-burning transport fuels, fertilisers for food production, plastics, methanol, waxes and detergents.

What are we doing?

Solid Energy is developing a small pilot project in Huntly, just north of Hamilton, to trial UCG technology in local conditions. Information gathered from the pilot project will help Solid Energy make a decision on whether to proceed to the next stage of a small commercial operation.

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