RWE Power, with headquarters in Essen and Cologne, Germany, is a company of the RWE Group. Its business is lignite-based and nuclear power generation. The Company employs about 10,300 people and operates three opencast lignite mines in the Rhineland area. Lignite production is predominantly used for electricity generation in the Company’s own power stations, but is also processed to make solid fuels and filter materials. In addition, RWE Power manages the operation, decommissioning and dismantling of RWE Power’s nuclear facilities. The Company’s power stations supply the grid with an overall capacity of more than 14 gigawatts.
Since the 1980’s RWE Power has also developed technologies for alternative utilization of coal via gasification and synthesis of hydrocarbons. This company contributes to the CLARA project with its practical experience in the field of coal gasification, coal gas cleaning and synthesis of hydrocarbons.
RWE Power will make available to the project an existing container-based synthesis test setup. Currently, this test setup is capable of studying the synthesis reactions of synthesis gas to methane, methanol and Fischer-Tropsch crude oil mix.
Futhermore, RWE Power will operate a mobile gas cleaning test rig to investigate innovative process steps to desulphurize the synthesis gas and to recover pure sulphur from the sour gas behind the desulphurization step. In case of success, this innovative concept has the ability to become significantly more economic than the currently applied technologies.