Managing Innovation: Accelerating the Development of Clean Coal Technology

Abstract

Coal gasification technology concerns the clean, efficient utilization of coal, providing a core solution to address its negative environmental image and impact. Presently, China is pursuing the development of coal gasification technology despite industry setbacks, limited progress and elusive solutions due to limited specialty materials, technological shortfalls and intellectual expertise. The most prominent challenges to overcome include unbalanced research and project scale development issues followed by an excessive emphasis on equipment manufacturing rather than responsible management practices. The ENN Group explored these industry shortcomings to develop a comprehensive management philosophy that is specifically tailored to overcome these fundamental hurdles. Such innovative solutions include the Centralized Innovation Camp, TRIZ (Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) training, Extensive Alliance Network and enhanced process management, focusing upon engineering, quality assurance and process efficiency with the overall objective of industrial scale application. As a result, ENN’s Clean Coal Technologies include: Coal Hydro-gasification, Supercritical Coal Gasification, Catalytic Coal Gasification and Underground Coal Gasification, having successfully completed all pilot plant testing requirements and the construction of demonstration commercial units.