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OKC based Benham is tapped for coal project: Company to help build processing plant in China
(Daily Oklahoman, The Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Dec. 11--A city-based engineering firm is working on an international project in China that will provide clean coal that can be used to make liquid fuel.
The Benham Cos. will provide engineering designs, equipment specifications, software development, procurement and construction and commissioning services for two different clean coal plants in the Inner Mongolia Province of China, officials said.
Clean Coal Technologies signed a $250 million deal to provide technology to build the plants with a Mongolia railroad representative this month. Clean Coal hired both Benham and SAIC, Benham's owner, to work on the projects. Work on the $8 billion, 10-year-long project will start early next year.
Benham previously engineered plans for power plants, safety systems and distilleries worldwide, including in China. The Oklahoma City company's experiences are key, said Dilo Paul, a senior scientist for SAIC, and Doug Hague, president and chief executive of Clean Coal Technologies.
Project plans
The initial job will consist of building a coal-processing plant that can provide 1.5 million metric tons of "pristine" coal annually for use at a nearby power plant.
"We take the coal, which is very low grade lignite and then remove its moisture and other contaminants through a multistaged heating process," Hague said.
The moisture and other contaminants are siphoned off and used or sold separately.
The coal that's left, meanwhile, is clean and suitable to be burned in the coal plant or processed into a liquid fuel, Hague said.
The project's next phase, officials said, is to expand it so that it produces 80 million metric tons of pristine coal annually.
Much of that coal will go to another plant that will turn the coal into liquid fuel.
The project's final phase, Paul and Hague said, is construction of a coal- processing plant at the coal mine's mouth that can produce up to a billion metric tons of pristine coal annually.
"This project is part of a plan within China to move it toward more energy independence by producing large quantities of fuel for its domestic production," Hague said this week.
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Copyright (c) 2008, The Oklahoman, Oklahoma City
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