Low Emission Electricity Plants

BishopBerkeley writes "Nature is reporting (I have a univ. IP, so hopefully the link works for everyone) that plans are underway to build a power plant in Scotland that dramatically reduces carbon emission in fossil fuel burning power plants. The process will use steam to crack methane into hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The hydrogen is then burned, and the carbon dioxide is pumped into deposits under the North Sea. If it works, will resistance to the Kyoto Treaty finally go away?"

Comments

Just a new method to dump carbon dioxide

[spectrum-]

the carbon dioxide is pumped into deposits under the North Sea

So they pump the CO2 into a hole in the ground instead of in the air to sidestep pollution laws. How does that really help overall? What happens to this gas long term?

Whats the point of this devlopment apart from temporarily reducing air emmissions in the direct surrounding?

Re:Just a new method to dump carbon dioxide

[PhilHibbs]

From Wikipedia:

Another proposed form of carbon sequestration in the ocean is direct injection. In this method, carbon dioxide is pumped directly into the water at depth, and expected to form "lakes" of liquid CO2 at the bottom. Experiments carried out in moderate to deep waters (350 - 3600 meters) indicate that the liquid CO2 reacts to form solid CO2 clathrate hydrates which gradually dissolve in the surrounding waters.

Also:

Phytoplankton in the oceans, like trees, use photosynthesis to extract carbon from CO2. They are the starting point of the marine food chain.

So it's like fertilizer for the seas.

Didn't Japan just try this?

[leonbrooks]

Well, you know: ocean, vapours rising...

Depositing CO2

[Pegasus]

There's a whole article in this month Scientific American on that topic. They examine three different methods of depositing CO2 from burning fossil fuels. I hope it will be online next month.

Other problems with Kyoto

[new-black-hand]

Other problems with Kyoto are governments mis-calculating their emissions and sending their countries into the red, with a devestating effect on their economies. Take for example New Zealand, whos govermnet originally predicted a $500 Million windfall from Kyoto due to reduced emissions, but last week the news broke that their calculations were wrong and instead their Kyoto bill wil come to $1 Billion. It is big news over in New Zealand, with the federal budget now in negative territory before it and the government are re-evaluating their Kyoto commitment. They are now looking at increasing corporate taxes to pay the Kyoto bill, leaving many unhappy. Many European nations are now in the same boat.

Bigger news on this front would be the Nuclear Fusion reactor Being built in France, and China announcing the next day that they will also be building a Fusion reactor. Clean energy? Not for at least another decade..

No

[anthony_dipierro]

If it works, will resistance to the Kyoto Treaty finally go away?

Unless this means Kyoto will no longer be a scheme to transfer wealth from the corporations of the most productive nations to the governments of least productive ones, I doubt it. A tax for not living in the stone ages sounds like a bad thing to a lot of people.

Re:No

[jlehtira]

A tax for not living in the stone ages sounds like a bad thing to a lot of people.

How terribly shortsighted of the lot. It is a tax for polluting our only, shared, planet. Throwing away things you don't need is a practice from stone age and it's getting increasingly dangerous now that we possess things that are far more poisonous than animal bones. Well, we can't really not throw away carbon dioxide now, but that's only because we're still living a stone age when it comes to recycling.

You know, I think it's sensible to make people pay for the damage they do to other people's property. That's law everywhere. Now, nobody, or all of us, really own this planet, so the payment is not a simple transaction. I think the model of polluters-pay-non-polluters fulfills this moral principle in a sound way. Sure, the more developped nations pollute more now, but that doesn't change anything. That's a lame excuse. Development does not necessarily involve pollution and even if it would it wouldn't change the moral responsibility involved.

Unfortunately... wrong solution, too late

[Engineer-Poet]

The reaction of methane and steam to form hydrogen and CO2 is energetically downhill. In practice, this means that the efficiency of the conversion of fuel to energy goes down.

If there was natural gas to spare, this wouldn't matter so much. Unfortunately, North American gas production has already peaked ; I'm sure Britain's situation is no better. We cannot afford to sacrifice efficiency to sequester CO2.

What we could use is technologies which allow CO2 to be captured and simultaneously boost efficiency. Solid-oxide fuel cells and molten-carbonate fuel cells, which can operate at substantial pressure, are good candidates for these. SOFC's in particular look good to me; their charge carriers are oxygen ions (O--) so the mixture on the fuel side of the cell shifts from fuel to CO2 and H2O. This means you don't have to exhaust CO2 along with the air feed, and it's easier to capture.

High-efficiency combined-cycle gas turbines can convert natural gas to electricity with an efficiency on the order of 60%, but they require large, central installations. SOFC's could conceivably be made in home-sized units without losing efficiency, and the waste heat from the process could be used for space heat and hot water. Heating with them would result in a substantial excess of electricity over local needs, which could be diverted to heat pumps to reduce the overall fuel required. (If you can get 60% out of the fuel cell and 3.3:1 out of the heat pump, the total CoP of the system can go as high as 2.4.) Run CO2 exhaust lines in parallel with the natural-gas supply lines, and you've really got something.

CO2 in the ocean makes the oceans acidic

[bloosqr]

Is pumping CO2 into the ocean really such a good idea? I There was a recent report that the oceans were becoming more acidic. Primarily due to the uptake of CO2 into the ocean. I would imagine pumping large amounts of CO2 on purpose over and above the natural uptake into the ocean would make this even worse. i.e. H2O + CO2 makes H2CO3 ala high school chemistry. H2CO3 is carbonic acid.

-bloo