Aug. 13--SOMERSET -- GreatPoint Energy Inc., which built a 200-foot-tall coal-to-natural-gas test facility here on the campus of the Brayton Point Power Station, will take the results of its testing and build a full-sized conversion facility in Texas, its chief operating officer said Wednesday.

The announcement by COO Avi Goldberg came at what was supposed to be a tour of its $30 million Mayflower Clean Energy Center by U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke. But Locke didn't make it. Company officials said his flight to Massachusetts was delayed by bad weather. The news media and local fire officials got the tour instead.

The decision to build in Texas doesn't mean closure for the Somerset operation, which employs about 50 people and has cost roughly $1 million per month to operate over the past year, Goldberg said.

Fine-tuning the conversion process, in which a heavy-metal catalyst is used to turn coal and other biomass -- such as cornstalks, wood chips and switch grass -- into clean-burning natural gas and carbon dioxide "is never done," said Goldberg. "The process can always been improved. There's always efficiencies that can be squeaked out."

So far, the process has been tested on two types of coal, said Thomas F. Robinson, vice president of projects.

"This plant will always be operating" because it provides a way for companies to explore the best method for turning different fuels into natural gas, Goldberg said.

Building a full-scale production facility will probably take three or four years.

"We have identified a couple of sites, one in Texas and one in Illinois, that we're working on right now to commercialize this technology," Goldberg said.

Texas is a prime location because coal is readily available and there is a use for the carbon dioxide, which is considered a waste gas because it contributes to global warming.

In Texas, the hope is to pump the carbon dioxide into dried-up oil wells "and use that to repressurize them and extract additional oil," he said.

Not only will it produce additional oil, it may provide a way to store the carbon dioxide.

GreatPoint's process permits the easy separation between the fuel and the carbon dioxide. The process can also be used to create pure hydrogen.

The facility includes a crushing machine to pulverize coal so the pieces are smaller than grains of sand. The catalyst is then added and the mixture is sent to the top of the 140-foot, 8-inch-wide test tower, where the conversion process takes place.

In a commercial facility, the conversion would take place in a 20-foot-wide reactor.

"From an emissions standpoint, we are much cleaner" than other facilities, Goldberg said. "We have people coming in from different countries just to see what we've done here. This is a model for a technology that will, hopefully, be developed in other states around the country and around the world." Dow Chemical Co., Suncor Energy, Peabody Energy and AES Corp. are among the investors in the project.

The company was created in October 2005.

gemery@projo.com

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