Along with several other partners, Consol Energy announced the projects’ success at a dedication ceremony on Thursday at the South Park Pennsylvania facilities of Consol’s Research and Development Group, which is overseeing both projects.

One of the projects is the pilot-scale test facility of PFBC (pressurised fluidised bed combustion) – an Environmental Energy Technology clean coal technology system used to generate power from waste coal and other fuels.

This pilot project is located at Consol Energy's R&D facilities and received a $1.64 million grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

The second project is a first-of-a-kind, micro-turbine generator configured to use unprocessed coal mine methane gas directly from an underground source to generate electricity.

The micro-turbine was installed as part of a Pennsylvania DEP project grant awarded to Consol Energy R&D – in conjunction with CNX Gas Corporation, majority owned by Consol Energy – and is being tested at the company’s Bailey underground mine.

Consol Energy worked with Environmental Energy Technology’s PFBC team to help with the design and construction of a process test facility (PTF) as part of Phase I (test facility construction/commissioning) of the project.

The PTF is capable of burning a wide variety of Pennsylvania waste coals with the objective of providing the necessary combustion and emissions data needed to design and build commercial-scale PFB electricity-generating units.