The officials said the coal reserves of the country are largely lignite to sub-bituminous which are considered of low rank. The country’s coal-fired power plants – those in Sual, Pagbilao, Calaca, Masinloc, Naga – are using the so-called pulverized coal boiler which requires high quality coal.
With the use of circulating fluidized bed (CFB), otherwise known as clean coal technology, the country could save more from procuring high quality coal requirements. At present, only Toledo power plant is using a small CFB boiler.
Good quality coal is called "bituminous." It is preferred over low quality coal which normally produces nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide and other air pollutants.
Philippine coal productions has stagnated at just over one million tons per year, while imports and consumption grew rapidly over the past 10 years, official figures show.
Domingo Casupang, head of the coal and nuclear minerals division of the Department of Energy (DOE), said the country’s "untapped vast low-rank coal resources" can be harnessed if more mine-mouth power plants are built, and clean technologies are adopted to address the emission problems associated with burning lignite.
Casupang said in a recent seminar on "The Coal Industry Today and its Future with Clean Coal Technology" that such clean technologies could involve the use of CFB boilers in the new plants that would be built in the future.
The DOE official noted that most power plants built in the country over the past decade use pulverized coal boiler designed for high-quality coal which domestic producers could not adequately provide, resulting in the decline of the Philippines’ coal mining industry.
According to Casupang, the existing environmental restrictions on the emission of carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide have made Philippine low-rank coal unattractive as fuel in power generation and cement production.
"The Philippine coal industry is not dead. It is ailing, but there could be hope for revival with this CFB technology," Griselda Bausa, director of the DOE’s energy resources development bureau, said.
Alstom Power of France export manager Jacques Barthelemy said the use of CFB boilers in new power plants "is certainly a solution."
"A CFB boiler design would be able to accommodate all the local coal mineable in the Philippines. CFB technology will march without any difficulty all the provisions of the Clean Air Act (CAA)," Barthelemy said.
Based on the CAA passed in 1999, the law prescribes limits on the nitrogen oxide, sulfur oxide and particulates from the point of emission of both old and new power plants.
According to Casupang, at least three mine-mouth power plant projects have been identified under the DOE’s Energy Program for 2002 to 2009. These are in Panay Island (100 MW) in 2006, in Isabela (300 MW) on 2007, and in Zamboanga (100 MW) in 2009.
Under the program, the domestic coal supply is expected to expand from 1.4 million tons in 2001 to 1.89 tons in 2006, 3.81 million tons in 2007, and 4.21 million tons in 2009.
Casupang said the Philippines’ coal reserves have been estimated at about 2.7 billion tons, of which the estimated proven and mineable stood at 423 million tons and 333 tons, respectively.