Environmental Impact Assessment of Coal Gasification in Hydrogen Production

Increasing industrialization and population demands for higher energy use as electricity. Coal has a broader share in electricity generation but there is problem of GHG emission due to direct coal combustion. Coal gasification is adopted as a cleaner technology in place of traditional method of generating electricity and hydrogen production. This study develops an assessment method to evaluate the pollutant emissions generated from coal gasification process. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a method used for evaluation of greenhouse gas emission quantity and fossil energy consumption. A system boundary of cradle to production stage is chosen for the study. The result shows that during coal mining and cleaning process CO₂ emission has higher contribution compared to CH₄and N₂O. In this stage, total CO₂ emission is 19.976 kg in which diesel alone emits 72.46 % of CO₂. During transportation of coal, train transport medium has lower CO₂ emission as 5.413 kg while road transportation emits 8.144 kgCO2. Production phase suggests that carbon capture and storage condition is suitable for environmental protection as it reduces CO₂, CH₄ and N₂O emission.