Teib Ali Assaf
Modern Montessori School, Amman, JORDAN
The use of oil as a source of fuel is conventional as it is easily transported in pipelines or by tankers. However, the greatest disadvantage of oil is that it has a limited lifespan, up to 30-50 years while on the other hand, coal has a greater lifespan than that of oil and natural gas combined reaching up to 350 years. The World Energy Council listed the recoverable reserves of coal in 1999 at around one million million tones. This is enough to sustain present production of coal for more than 200 years. Unlike oil, coal is not as convenient due to it being present in a solid state; therefore it cannot be easily transported through pipelines. On the other hand, coal gasification offers many benefits, one of which is a more efficient electricity generating method than the conventional coal-burning power plant. But gasification requires heating coal in presence of steam and catalyst and this is done by burning fossil fuel. That is a big problem that I solved by designing number of units where steam and hot coal are obtained by solar energy.
I carried number of physical and chemical experiments for me to be able to come with a unique design.
I designed a solar panel where vegetable oil is used to store energy from the sun. I designed a heat exchange system to transfer this heat to water and to produce pressurized steam. The steam will then be allowed to come in contact with pre-heated coal in a special reactor that is provided with lenses to maintain high temperature inside the reactor. Coal is preheated using lenses.
The design was tested and was able to produce significant amount of gaseous fuel.