A coal gas-to-methanol demonstration unit originally planned at the Great Plains coal gasification plant in North Dakota likely will have to be built elsewhere.
Plant owner Dakota Gasification Co. said a major reason for not being able to locate the project at the Great Plains site is that it could not get permission from its gas buyers to divert production from synthetic gas to methanol.
Dakota Gasification recently filed suit against its gas buyers in connection with their obligation to pay for gas produced beyond the plant's original design capacity.
Meantime, Kent Janssen, vice-president and chief operating officer of Dakota Gasification, said two projects are nearing completion that will signal the first major byproduct developments at the Great Plains plant since Dakota Gasification assumed ownership.
Construction is nearly complete on a phenol recovery unit and a krypton-xenon plant. Capital investment in the two projects is about $25 million.
Plans call for finished phenol to be ready for market in December.
METHANOL DEMONSTRATION
Janssen said Dakota Gasification will continue to play a role in the methanol demonstration effort. The company will work with Air Product & Chemicals Inc., Allentown, Pa., in shifting the project to another site.
The new location and other proposed changes will be disclosed as soon as the companies reach final agreement with the prospective new host.
Janssen said preliminary indications are that moving the project to a new site will not be a major obstacle in going ahead with the demonstration.
The Department of Energy, which selected the proposed project as one of its Clean Coal Technology demonstration ventures, must agree to the new site before it signs a final agreement.
The project was designed to produce 500 tons/day of methanol by 1993.
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