Coal upgrading technology Coal upgrading technology Coal upgrading technology refers to a class of technologies developed to remove moisture and certain pollutants from low rank coals such as sub-Bituminous coal and lignite (brown coal) and raise their calorific values. Companies located in Australia, Germany and the United States are the principal drivers of the research, development and commercialisation of these technologies. Around 30 nations collectively operate more than 1,400 brown coal-fired power stations around the world. Brown coal power stations that cannot economically dewater brown coal are inefficient and cause of high levels of carbon emissions. High emitting power stations, notably the Hazelwood
Coal gasification refiner wants to produce alkanes (i.e., hydrocarbons present in natural gas, gasoline, and diesel fuel), the coal gas is collected at this state and routed to a Fischer-Tropsch reactor. If, however, hydrogen is the desired end-product, the coal gas (primarily the CO product) undergoes the water gas shift reaction where more hydrogen is produced by additional reaction with water vapor: Although other technologies for coal gasification currently exist, all employ, in general, the same chemical processes. For low-grade coals (i.e., "brown coals") which contain significant amounts of water, there are technologies in which no steam is required during the reaction,