Plans for a coal gasification power plant at SIUC are in the initial stages, but the size of the hypothetical plant is already growing.

Physical Plant Director Phil Gatton said the university still cannot release the findings of a study done to determine the feasibility of constructing the plant, but he said officials have decided the plant would need to be much larger than first expected.

The plant, initially projected to produce 200 to 250 megawatts of power, would need to produce 300 or 600 megawatts of power to be worth building, Gatton said. The change is due to limitations of the relatively new coal gasification technology, he said.

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“We found out basically the technology didn’t support a unit as small as what we were looking at,” he said.

The SIUC Power Plant burns coal and produces roughly two and a half megawatts of power, or 12 to 15 percent of what the campus uses.

The university received a draft of the feasibility study early last month, but the university has declined to release it until the state gives the go-ahead. Gatton said the initial draft did not provide enough specifics about potential sites for the plant, and the university asked the consultant that performed the study to add more information.

“There were just some things we weren’t happy about in the report after we started looking at it,” he said.

The initial proposal for the plant, drafted by SIU President Glenn Poshard, stated the structure would produce power for SIUC’s campus, local communities and other universities across the state. The plant would produce 100 to 150 permanent jobs once constructed.

The plant would employ coal gasification technology designed to reduce emissions. In the process, coal is broken down into its basic components to remove pollutants.

John Mead, director of the SIUC Coal Research Center, said the gasifiers that perform this function are only produced be a few companies in the United States, and therefore the selection is limited.

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Though further research into gasification could improve the technology, it is not feasible to build gasifiers that do not produce at least 200 megawatts of power, Mead said. Because of the way the plants typically operate, a plant with such a gasifier could produce even more power.

Joe Crawford can be reached at 536-3311 ext. 254 or [email protected].