Technical and Economic Assessment of Potential to Upgrade Gob Gas to Pipeline Quality.
Coal mines venting methane to the atmosphere are responsible for approximately eight percent of global methane emissions (EPA, 1993). Methane, in turn, is 21 times as effective as carbon dioxide in trapping heat in the amosphere and accounts fo 20 percent of the greenhouse effect that is causing global climate change. Much ot the methane emissions from active coal mines comes from mine ventilation exhaust shafts, but the methane concentration is so minute (less than one percent) that it is rarely economically recoverable given current technologies. Gas from gob wells, the other major source at many active longwall mining operations, however, is available at methane concentrations from about 30 percent to over 90 percent. In this range of concentration gob gas may become a valuable fuel for such uses as generating power in gas turbines or internal combustion engines.
|Office of Air and Radiation|
|Office of Coalbed Methane Outreach|
|Atmospheric Pollution Prevention Division|
|Economic Impact Assessment|
|Alternative Energy Development, Inc. (AED)|