Alaskan green fuel project eyes India and China
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A wholly-owned subsidiary of Alaska’s Silverado Gold-Mines, Silverado Green Fuel, this week met with Chinese coal-mine and utility operators in the Heilongjiang Province, and held meetings with high-level executives of the Chinese Coal Ministry, in Beijing.
The parties expressed interest in forming a joint venture with Silverado to develop Silverado Green Fuel production plants.
Silverado reported that the company has also received a favourable response from India, where it visited Indian industry leaders in the past on several occasions.
Importing Silverado’s Green Fuel into India would offer a low-cost alternative to imported oil or gas, and a significant environmental improvement over the use of high-ash Indian bituminous coal.
The company is currently working with a number of organisations to develop funding for a small, five- to ten-MW Silverado Green Fuel-fired power generating plant in the State of Gujarat.
Silverado’s green fuel is designed primarily as a low-cost, nonhazardous alternative to petroleum-derived fuels used in oil-designed boilers. It will compete primarily in international oil markets in the Pacific Rim. To initially test Silverado’s green fuel, the company is seeking to identify mid-sized utility and industrial boiler owners, whose facilities have been adversely affected or were forced to close due to the high cost of oil.
Alaska’s Beluga coal-field, about 96 km south-west of Anchorage, is believed to be the world’s largest low sulphur coalfield, located on year-round open tidewater with over two-billion tons of proven reserves.
The application of hydrothermal treatment to coal from Alaska’s Beluga coalfield has already been demonstrated at a pilot plant scale showing that this coal can be converted into premium, stable liquid fuel with energy levels of over 7 000 Btu/lb on a cost-effective basis.
The next step in commercialising this technology will be to build and operate a commercial-scale demonstration plant to produce thousands of tons of this fuel, which prospective fuel buyers will require for independent testing in their own oil-designed boilers.
The site where Silverado’s green fuel demonstration plant can be built most rapidly and cost-effectively is Silverado’s idled gold recovery plant, at its Grant Mine, near Fairbanks, Alaska.
The Grant Mill, situated on the Grant Mine, currently contains much of the necessary equipment and ample space in the buildings to accommodate the remaining equipment. Silverado has already assembled sales and engineering teams to develop the demonstration project, and market Silverado’s green fuel and Silverado’s green fuel production and utilisation technology.
The company believes that the technology is capable of addressing large market opportunities in the Pacific Rim, as well as emerging markets in India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and China.
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