Magnetohydrodynamics: A Promising Technology for Efficiently Generating Electricity From Coal

A review of the status, potential, and alternative Federal strategies for development of magnetohydrodynamics (MHD), a promising but relatively unproven technology for generating electricity from coal, was undertaken. Systems developed using this technology generate electricity by moving super-hot electrically charged gas through a powerful magnetic field. The strong points of these systems are their potentially high operating efficiencies and low environmental emissions. Their weak points are the many technical problems associated with using coal as their fuel. Commercial-scale systems using coal are still about 20 years away. Another weak point is that although the Department of Energy (DOE) will have spent about $273 million to develop MHD by 1979, it will cost about $2 billion through the 1980's to continue to develop and demonstrate the technology. At present, DOE has developed a two-phased MHD program which calls for testing at three new larger-than-laboratory United States facilities and a $372 million pilot plant. Because DOE plans to use test results from the three new test facilities as the basis for a pilot plant design, testing delays at these facilities could affect the quality of information available to support the design. DOE has already experienced from 2-month to 1-year delays in starting testing at the three facilities. Also reviewed was the essentially conservative United States MHD program and how it compared to the Soviet Union's program which can be described as building a large plant based on results at relatively small facilities and accepting the risk that costly changes may have to be made to the plant to make the effort technically successful.