The Department of Energy projects that between the years 1995 and 2010, the United States will need to build new power plants to generate an additional 150,000 MW of electricity to meet the increasing demand for electric power. One possibility is to build coal-fired power plants, which cost $1300 per kW to construct and have an efficiency of 40 percent. Another possibility is to use the clean-burning Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plants where the coal is subjected to heat and pressure to gasify it while removing sulfur and particulate matter from it. The gaseous coal is then burned in a gas turbine, and part of the waste heat from the exhaust gases is recovered to generate steam for the steam turbine. Currently the construction of IGCC plants costs about $1500 per kW, but their efficiency is about 48 percent. The average heating value of the coal is about 28,000,000 kJ per ton (that is, 28,000,000 kJ of heat is released when 1 ton of coal is burned). If the IGCC plant is to recover its cost difference from fuel savings in five years, determine what the price of coal should be in $ per ton.
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