Coal upgrading technology power station in Australia, attract environmental criticism. Many modern economies including Greece and Victoria (Australia) are highly dependent on brown coal for electricity. Improved environmental performance and the need for stable economic environment provide incentive for investment to substantially reduce the negative environmental impact of burning raw ('as mined') brown coal. Coal upgrading technologies remove moisture from 'as mined' brown coal and transform the calorific performance of brown coal to a 'cleaner' burning status relatively equivalent to high calorific value black coal. Some coal upgrading processes result in a densified coal product that is considered to be a Black coal
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,