Geostar, a United States resources company, plans to use Australian technology to turn Victoria’s vast reserves of brown coal, or lignite, into a “clean coal” resource that can be used for coal gasification, coal-to-liquids or ‘clean’ power generation.Geostar has signed a memorandum of understanding with Perth-based Environmental Solutions International to commercialise the Australian company’s dewatering “clean coal” technology.Under terms of the MOU, Geostar will match ESI’s commercialisation funding for dewatering technology that was originally developed at Melbourne University, which ESI acquired with its purchase of Asia Pacific Coal & Steel earlier this year.Geostar’s Australian subsidiary, Victorian Coal Resources (VCR), will work with ESI to produce dewatered brown coal products suitable for steel production or clean coal feedstock for power generation (said to burn with 30% less greenhouse gas emissions than standard brown coal), coal gasification or coal-to-oil markets.The US company said subject to infrastructure being in place, it had targeted a production rate of 100 million tonnes per annum for the “added value” brown coal products, with the intention of creating new export markets.Source: Energy Review
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