Germany Fired Up Over Clean Coal

MIT's Technology Review is reporting on the world's first coal-driven power plant designed to capture and store C02 emissions. "Vattenfall's small 30-megawatt plant burns the lignite in air from which nitrogen has been removed. Combustion in the resulting oxygen-rich atmosphere produces a waste stream of carbon dioxide and water vapor, three-quarters of which is recycled back into the boiler. By repeating this process, known as oxyfuel, it is possible to greatly concentrate the carbon dioxide. After particles and sulfur have been removed, and water vapor has been condensed out, the waste gas can be 98 percent carbon dioxide, according to Vattenfall. The separated carbon dioxide will be cooled down to -28 C and liquefied. Starting next year, the plan is to transport it by truck 150 miles northwest, to be injected 3,000 meters underground into a depleted inland gas field in Altmark. Ideally, in the future, the gas will be carried by pipeline to underground storage, says Vattenfall. "

Comments

how much power does it use

[maharg]

really, how much CO2 is generated in removing the nitrogen from the air used to combust the lignite ?

Re:how much power does it use

[Anonymous Coward]

How about building a greenhouse next door and pumping the CO2 in there?

Re:how much power does it use

[Joce640k]

The you can compress the results and feed it back into the reactor.

- Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "breeder reactor".

Re:how much power does it use

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be reusing the CO2, also making the greenhouse more fertile, but would not be carbon neutral.

--
knowledge = power
patented knowledge = power lost

Re:how much power does it use

[Thiez]

I doubt the growth of plants is limited by the amount of CO2 in the air. Since those plants will at some point either rot or get eaten (thereby releasing the CO2 again) putting produced CO2 in a greenhouse does not offer any advantages over pumping the CO2 into the air.

Re:how much power does it use

[DynaSoar]

really, how much CO2 is generated in removing the nitrogen from the air used to combust the lignite ?

None. The carbon come from burning the lignite, which is predominantly carbon, not from the air. A minor difference but a crucial one. The atmosphere contains 0.01 to 0.1% CO2, so your question is reasonable. But that being so, one should look to the rest of the process for the source, the answer being a BGO (Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious). Almost pure carbon + almost pure oxygen = a lot of CO2.

I'm interested in knowing where the nitrogen goes. If dumped in the air as N2 one would hope precautions against exposure to high concentrations are going to be stringent.

If turned into ammonia, it could be very useful in many manufacturing processes. But one then wonders where the hydrogen will come from. The water vapor produced in the combustion process is going to be recycled, if I read the description properly. Even if it weren't, 78% of the atmosphere is nitrogen, requiring a lot of hydrogen to bind to. Pulling it from water would eat up a lot of the energy produced. "Waste" hydrocarbons left over from cracking crude oil would be a good source.

Re:how much power does it use

[Bryan Ischo]

I am pretty sure the O.P. is asking, how much CO2 is generated by the process that takes the Nitrogen out of air? That must be an energy-intensive process, and most energy-intensive processes that we know of generate lots of CO2.

Re:how much power does it use

[vuo]

Nitrogen is removed by distillation of liquified air. Air is liquified by compressing it so that it gets hotter, cooling it and then expanding adiabatically; the heat has been removed, so the air can only cool, and cool it does, to the point it liquifies. Now the question is how do you power the compressor? That's your energy expenditure. If it comes from the same power plant, all is well.

The real problem that I see here is that it is not carbon neutral. You're taking fossil carbon and making fossil carbon dioxide, and hope that it doesn't leak into the atmosphere quickly enough to matter. It doesn't solve the energy question and may not even solve the problem of carbon dioxide emissions.

Re:how much power does it use

[LandKurt]

Apparently some plants do grow faster with increased CO2 and some don't. It varies by crop. It would probably work better to use the CO2 to grow masses of algae in tanks. You can supposedly get huge amounts of biomass per acre that way. It's a lot easier to sequester the carbon in biomass by burying it than by trying to hide the gaseous CO2 somewhere. I don't trust these schemes that have huge reservoirs of CO2 somewhere. If it blows out somehow and escapes all it once things get real nasty for anyone addicted to breathing oxygen in the neighborhood.

Re:how much power does it use

[maharg]

hey Brian, you got it ! Extracting nitrogen from air has to generate a fair amount of CO2. It looks like some algae can do it, not sure what the by-products from that would be.

Re:how much power does it use

[maharg]

so how do they get the nitrogen out of the air ? they must use some power source, right ? power sources generally emit CO2, or leave stockpiles of materials with long half lives. Or are they using a clean power source ? If so, kinda begs the question, why not just use the clean power source in the first place and avoid all the hassle.

Re:how much power does it use

[jimdread]

It'd be more useful to grow plants that we can use the products from. For example, assume that a ton of coal contains 1 ton of carbon. Burning it will produce about 3.6 tons of carbon dioxide. That amount of carbon dioxide therefore contains 1 ton of carbon, and about 2.6 tons of oxygen.

Consider a cotton plant. When the cotton is picked from the plant, it contains carbon that the plant absorbed from the atmosphere. Let's assume that 4 tons of cotton contains 1 ton of carbon. That means that all the carbon from burning 1 ton of coal is stored in 4 tons of cotton. If we use the 4 tons of cotton to make clothes and other things, that stores the carbon in a form where it's not in the atmosphere. If the carbon isn't in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, it can't cause global warming.

And it's not just cotton. Every plant product contains stored carbon. To get the carbon, the plant had to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or from the ocean. Since this problem is all about balance, we should in theory be able to balance the amount of carbon being dug up and burned with the amount we store by harvesting plants and using them for long-lasting things. Even products like paper are useful, as long as they aren't burned once they aren't wanted any more.

If plant products are going to be burned, they should be burned in a power plant to produce electricity. It should be possible to replace coal with waste paper, and other waste plant products. This is already being done at various places around the world.

Of course people will object and say that this can't possibly work. How can plants get us out of this mess? If the coal we're burning is made of dead plants, then plants got us into this mess, why can't they get us out? Plants were able to absorb all of the carbon dioxide needed to make the coal in the first place. Surely with all the agricultural knowledge in the world, we can grow plants and absorb it again.

Re:how much power does it use

[ichigo 2.0]

Well the subject matter is a power plant, so I'd say we found the power source. :)

I guess the entire process produces more energy than it uses, otherwise they wouldn't be planning larger facilities.

Re:how much power does it use

[DavidTC]

I'm not a big fan of storing CO2 either, when it seems to make sense to store carbon instead.

Yes, biological carbon eventually decays and forms CO2, but there are a lot of forms resistant to it.

But, and this is a weird idea, what if we combined that with the idea of putting it in the ocean? What if we made, for example, grew a bunch of plants with it, and then simply stuck them underwater to rot? Such, they'd decay down there...but seems like it's be easier than trying to pump CO2 into the ocean.

Or, combine it with the article, and put them in water storage underground. Most oil wells already pump salt water down there, so you'd just need to 'pump' the plants down there. You'd obviously have to use algae or something, but it could work. Pump it down there and let it die from lack of sun.

It wouldn't even require much change of plans. Instead of storing compressed CO2, operate a CO2 greenhouse over a 'scummy swimming pool' (For lack of a better term) and keep scraping off the algae to pump down there. (In a high-enough CO2 environment, you'd have to do it pretty continuously.)

Re:how much power does it use

[Thiez]

Short answer: no.

Long answer:

> Consider a cotton plant. When the cotton is picked from the plant, it contains carbon that the plant absorbed from the atmosphere. Let's assume that 4 tons of cotton contains 1 ton of carbon. That means that all the carbon from burning 1 ton of coal is stored in 4 tons of cotton. If we use the 4 tons of cotton to make clothes and other things, that stores the carbon in a form where it's not in the atmosphere. If the carbon isn't in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide, it can't cause global warming.

Nobody is going to use that cotton forever. At some point bacteria will eat it and they will release CO2.

> And it's not just cotton. Every plant product contains stored carbon. To get the carbon, the plant had to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or from the ocean. Since this problem is all about balance, we should in theory be able to balance the amount of carbon being dug up and burned with the amount we store by harvesting plants and using them for long-lasting things. Even products like paper are useful, as long as they aren't burned once they aren't wanted any more.

Only if we start using a LOT less energy than we do now, and NEVER throw anything away. And do you intend to keep that paper forever? It will decay eventually, and release the CO2 again.

> If plant products are going to be burned, they should be burned in a power plant to produce electricity. It should be possible to replace coal with waste paper, and other waste plant products. This is already being done at various places around the world.

I seriously doubt we can fill ALL our energy needs by burning plant products, unless we start using enormous amounts of land to grow plants to burn. But that's stupid since solar cells are more efficient than plants (plants convert light in chemical energy with 6% efficiency under optimal conditions) and are likely to get even more efficient in the comming decades (unlike plants). Note that I support buring old paper and stuff for electricity (after all there is little other use for it), but not using large areas of land to build plants to burn for fuel.

> Of course people will object and say that this can't possibly work.

That's me :)

> How can plants get us out of this mess? If the coal we're burning is made of dead plants, then plants got us into this mess, why can't they get us out?

The mess is caused by people getting carbon from outside our environment (deep underground) and putting it IN our environment. Plants did NOT get us in this mess.

> Plants were able to absorb all of the carbon dioxide needed to make the coal in the first place.

And the whole thing took them hundreds of millions of years.

> Surely with all the agricultural knowledge in the world, we can grow plants and absorb it again.

The problem isn't really convincing plants to absorb the carbon, the problem is keeping it there. It would be awesome if we could somehow remove the carbon from our environment somehow... like storing it underground!

Re:how much power does it use

[Thiez]

> But, and this is a weird idea, what if we combined that with the idea of putting it in the ocean? What if we made, for example, grew a bunch of plants with it, and then simply stuck them underwater to rot? Such, they'd decay down there...but seems like it's be easier than trying to pump CO2 into the ocean.

You know what happens when stuff rots? It uses oxygen. Pretty much all creatures near those rotting plants are going to die.

> Or, combine it with the article, and put them in water storage underground. Most oil wells already pump salt water down there, so you'd just need to 'pump' the plants down there. You'd obviously have to use algae or something, but it could work. Pump it down there and let it die from lack of sun.

Those plants used energy to store that CO2. How about we instead use the ground that you suggested we use for growing CO2-absorbing plants and fill that ground with solar panels and use the produced energy so we need less coal? Putting plants under the ground is like putting perfectly good fuel under the ground.

> It wouldn't even require much change of plans. Instead of storing compressed CO2, operate a CO2 greenhouse over a 'scummy swimming pool' (For lack of a better term) and keep scraping off the algae to pump down there. (In a high-enough CO2 environment, you'd have to do it pretty continuously.)

Those plants would probably have to absorb more sun-energy to store enough CO2 than you gain by getting that oil/gas/coal. And at that point we might as well have placed solar panels on an area as large as the algae-compensation-thing required, instead of drilling for oil/gas and mining for coal.

Re:how much power does it use

[joocemann]

really, how much CO2 is generated in removing the nitrogen from the air used to combust the lignite ?

And all the other factors as well, such as the energy required to cool so much hot CO2 that much.

This is a big effort to make a turd smell like a rose. IT IS STILL A TURD. There are loads of other ways to generate energy, ways with no relevant emissions/waste products and reusable/recyclable materials. Example: Solar, wind, etc.

Here in the US we've spent a lot of money to get our hands on more oil. If we had simply invested that same amount into intelligent and clean choices, we'd have energy costing us pennies on the bill and electric cars all over carlots. We wouldn't even have to lie to our citizens about what we're doing! We could just say: "Hey! We're going to spend nearly 1 trillion dollars on making your energy needs nonexistant, and on top of that, it'll be much better for the environment we rely on for life!"

Re:how much power does it use

[jimdread]

How can plants get us out of this mess? If the coal we're burning is made of dead plants, then plants got us into this mess, why can't they get us out?

The mess is caused by people getting carbon from outside our environment (deep underground) and putting it IN our environment. Plants did NOT get us in this mess.

If coal is made of plants, then coal is part of our environment. It's just part that has been turned into rock for a long time. Think about an atom of carbon in a hunk of coal. Imagine it being dug up and transported to a power plant and burned. It meets an oxygen molecule, and they join up to form a carbon dioxide molecule. That's pretty much all most people think about when they talk about global warming.

Here's the other part of the story that most people aren't thinking about. Instead of thinking about the atom of carbon in the present and in the future, think about its past. Think about where it came from.

The carbon atom in the hunk of coal was once a carbon atom in a plant, most likely about 300 million to 360 million years ago. That plant was turned into coal by being covered in mud and squashed for hundreds of millions of years.

The carbon atom must have been in the atmosphere or in the ocean in order to get absorbed by the plant. Those are pretty much the only places that plants get carbon dioxide. Therefore, carbon dioxide levels must have been much higher hundreds of millions of years ago. There had to be heaps of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in the ocean in order for all that coal and other fossil fuel to form. It didn't just get put there by aliens. Fossil fuels are made of dead squished up plants and animals. Coal, oil, and natural gas were once alive.

So the only way that all the carbon could have gotten into the coal, oil, etc, is if it was all in the atmosphere and the ocean, and then plants sucked it out, and deposited their bodies to form future coal. For example, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during the Cambrian period averaged 4500ppm, over 10 times higher than current levels.

There is no way we could possibly get the atmosphere back up to 4500ppm. We would have to find, dig up and burn all the fossil fuel on the planet. And even that wouldn't be enough. We would also have to burn all the rock that has formed in the last billion years. Rock is made of calcium carbonate. The large sheets of limestone show that areas of the planet were covered with an ocean with a huge amount of carbon dioxide dissolved in it. That's how limestone gets formed. And limestone is partially solid carbon dioxide.

There is no need to keep a piece of paper forever. Suppose a ton of paper contains 250kg of carbon atoms. Suppose it takes ten years for a ton of paper to rot and convert into carbon dioxide. If you produce 100 tons of paper per year, you will end up with about 1000 tons of paper on hand at any time. That paper will contain 250 tons of carbon atoms. Those carbon atoms won't be in the atmosphere, because they are in the paper.

It's the same with coal. The only reason the carbon atoms are stuck in coal instead of being inside a puppy or a cotton plant is because they happened to be in those plants when they got buried. It's still a cycle, the same as paper rotting is a cycle. Burning coal is a natural process, which occurs even without human intervention. This should not be very surprising, since coal can be up to 100% carbon, and the atmosphere is 20% oxygen. Of course it will burn if the conditions are right. Maybe a lightning strike sets it off.

It's simply a balance problem. If we want to burn the coal, we need to store enough carbon atoms as something which isn't carbon dioxide in the atmosphere or the ocean. That's what this "clean coal" thing is about, they want to store the atoms underground. I'm just saying that we can store the atoms as clothes, paper, furniture, boats, houses, puppies

Re:how much power does it use

[Thiez]

>> The mess is caused by people getting carbon from outside our environment (deep underground) and putting it IN our environment. Plants did NOT get us in this mess.

> If coal is made of plants, then coal is part of our environment. It's just part that has been turned into rock for a long time.

And since it has been turned to rock and is, in many cases, burried so deep that is does not significantly affect the rest of the world (it might as well have been burried on mars), then I think we may consider that coal not to be part of our current environment. But you are right that is was part of the environment in the past. I guess we're going to disagree about the precise definition of 'environment', so what I meant to say was that the burried coal did not affect us when it was burried, but it does now.

> Think about an atom of carbon in a hunk of coal. Imagine it being dug up and transported to a power plant and burned. It meets an oxygen molecule, and they join up to form a carbon dioxide molecule. That's pretty much all most people think about when they talk about global warming.

I know this (although they really should think about methane in addition to carbon dioxide).

> Here's the other part of the story that most people aren't thinking about. Instead of thinking about the atom of carbon in the present and in the future, think about its past. Think about where it came from.

> The carbon atom in the hunk of coal was once a carbon atom in a plant, most likely about 300 million to 360 million years ago. That plant was turned into coal by being covered in mud and squashed for hundreds of millions of years.

> The carbon atom must have been in the atmosphere or in the ocean in order to get absorbed by the plant. Those are pretty much the only places that plants get carbon dioxide. Therefore, carbon dioxide levels must have been much higher hundreds of millions of years ago. There had to be heaps of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and in the ocean in order for all that coal and other fossil fuel to form. It didn't just get put there by aliens. Fossil fuels are made of dead squished up plants and animals. Coal, oil, and natural gas were once alive.

> So the only way that all the carbon could have gotten into the coal, oil, etc, is if it was all in the atmosphere and the ocean, and then plants sucked it out, and deposited their bodies to form future coal. For example, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during the Cambrian period [wikipedia.org] averaged 4500ppm, over 10 times higher than current levels.

> There is no way we could possibly get the atmosphere back up to 4500ppm. We would have to find, dig up and burn all the fossil fuel on the planet. And even that wouldn't be enough. We would also have to burn all the rock that has formed in the last billion years. Rock is made of calcium carbonate. The large sheets of limestone show that areas of the planet were covered with an ocean with a huge amount of carbon dioxide dissolved in it. That's how limestone gets formed. And limestone is partially solid carbon dioxide.

While this is all very interesting (I'm serious, the atmosphere was indeed different back then and I find that fascinating, I hear oxygen levels were higher too?), I don't really see how this is relevant. We don't live hundreds of millions of years ago.

> There is no need to keep a piece of paper forever. Suppose a ton of paper contains 250kg of carbon atoms. Suppose it takes ten years for a ton of paper to rot and convert into carbon dioxide. If you produce 100 tons of paper per year, you will end up with about 1000 tons of paper on hand at any time. That paper will contain 250 tons of carbon atoms. Those carbon atoms won't be in the atmosphere, because they are in the paper.

The problem is we produce billions of tons of CO2 each year. Suppose your paper is made out of pure CO2. Even if we produced a 1000 tons of paper each year and kept that paper forever, that is less than 0.1% of the CO2 we produce every ye

Re:how much power does it use

[Ex-MislTech]

I wish they'd just put up more CSP Solar in the major deserts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy#High-temperature_collectors

Photovoltaic will be feasible someday, but right now
CSP solar is winning.

If they get a molten salt storage working on large scale
it will be a fair while before photovoltaic can catch up.

Molten salt storage could hit 99% efficiency in theory.

CSP plus molten salt could possibly hit 60% cumulatively.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_thermal_energy#Molten_salt_storage

Re:how much power does it use

[NotBornYesterday]

If they pump it into what was a natural gas field that held large amounts of gas under pressure for millions of years, what makes you think it would find its way out easily?

Re:how much power does it use

[DynaSoar]

so how do they get the nitrogen out of the air ? they must use some power source, right ? power sources generally emit CO2, or leave stockpiles of materials with long half lives. Or are they using a clean power source ? If so, kinda begs the question, why not just use the clean power source in the first place and avoid all the hassle.

Now that question makes it more obvious what you were asking above. Parsed according to grammar, I answered to what you wrote rather than what you meant. And you're right to ask.

No power generation method provides an over all long term energy profit. They are all entropic. The process in TFA localizes the energy intake and by product output in a way more convenient than most. For the method they propose, read the full site linked to in the TR article and the references.

Re:how much power does it use

[jimdread]

That's what this "clean coal" thing is about, they want to store the atoms underground. I'm just saying that we can store the atoms as clothes, paper, furniture, boats, houses, puppies, diamonds, cars, kittens, shoes, cotton plants, palm trees, footballs, bricks, etc. There are heaps of things made out of carbon on the planet. Each of them keeps some carbon atoms out of the atmosphere. They don't have to keep it out of the atmosphere forever. We just need enough of the things to keep enough atoms out of the atmosphere at the time.

Like I said, we produce billions of tons of CO2 per year, that is a LOT of stuff made out of carbon. It's probably much easier to store much of that underground than to make all kinds of stuff out of it.

The billions of tons of carbon dioxide we produce each year must come from somewhere. Aliens aren't delivering it in spaceships. The carbon dioxide comes from the billions of tons of fossil fuels that we're mining, transporting, and burning. It should be obvious that we are able to mine, transport, and burn all those tons of fossil fuels, even though all that coal etc is "a LOT of stuff made out of carbon".

Not only are we currently able to mine, transport, and use billions of tons of fossil fuels every year, we are also able to mine, harvest, manufacture, produce, transport, use, and consume billions of tons per year of other stuff. Other stuff is defined as anything that is not fossil fuels. Therefore, we clearly already have the capacity to deal with amounts of stuff that you consider "a LOT" and difficult to deal with.

All we have to do is to count the carbon atoms in the fossil fuels we burn each year, and make sure we take that many carbon atoms out of the atmosphere and the ocean in plant and animal products. If we use those products for some years, then the carbon is stored out of the atmosphere.

The problem is we produce billions of tons of CO2 each year. Suppose your paper is made out of pure CO2. Even if we produced a 1000 tons of paper each year and kept that paper forever, that is less than 0.1% of the CO2 we produce every year.

Okay, now try to imagine what would happen if, rather than producing 1000 tons of paper, we produced billions of tons of paper, kittens, puppies, diamonds, boats, and other stuff every year. You know, like we already are. What percentage would that be of the carbon dioxide we produce every year?

We are also water-based lifeforms. Surely it is madness to complain about floods?

Floods often have bad effects. Complaining about floods isn't madness. Water covers three quarters of the planet. It would be madness to say that water is pollution. How can water be pollution when it's everywhere?

The four most abundant elements in the universe are hydrogen, helium, oxygen, and carbon. How can carbon be called pollution? It's everywhere.

Suppose we build machines that take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and convert it into cars, buildings, boats, kittens, cotton plants, boats, puppies, etc. Suppose that these machines allow us to take as much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as we want. Suppose we've also got solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal power stations powering everything.

Suppose we didn't need to burn fossil fuels for energy. If we had those machines, should we burn the fossil fuels and convert it into kittens and other things? Or should we keep it buried underground?

Re:how much power does it use

[NotBornYesterday]

Uhh, the atmosphere is already almost 80% N2. He's asking if they are burning lignite and pure O2, and we assume that they got the O2 from the atmosphere, how did they separate the O2 and N2, and how much energy did they spend to do that?

My guess on the nitrogen is they either blow it back into the atmosphere where it belongs, or perhaps they could compress/cool it into liquid nitrogen, which has scientific, medical, and industrial uses.

Re:how much power does it use

[TooMuchToDo]

Would it not make sense than to find a plant that grows fast and can be used to build tons of housing in the third world (bamboo comes to mind, although I'm not aware of how much wood is created per pound of CO2 respirated)? Fixing social needs and sequestering carbon at the same time! Woohoo.

Re:how much power does it use

[jimdread]

Yes, that would make sense. It also makes sense to grow the fastest growing useful plants all over the place. For example, cars are currently predominantly made of steel. But consider the Corvette, "wrap your ass in fiberglass". If we replace the glass in fiberglass with woven plant material, we can produce panels which store carbon. All we have to do is balance the books. If we want to release 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year, then we'll need to take 30 billion tons out. So if we have 6 billion people, we could provide say 5 tons of carbon in the form of useful stuff for each person each year.

If the stuff wears out or isn't wanted any more, it can be collected and burned in the electricity-producing incinerator. Or it could be composted or mulched to improve plant growth. We'll have a lot of stuff, so there will be a lot of different uses.

Pumping carbon dioxide underground isn't the right thing to do. At least pump it into a pond and grow some algae with it. Then, dry out the algae, and turn it into plastic, fuel, animal food, etc. Why not grow the algae, dry it out, and burn it in the power plant?

Also I wish to complain about where it says C02 in the summary. "See Zero Two". Oh yeah baby, that's real science. How about changing it to CO2? "See Oh Two"?

Re:how much power does it use

[Huggs11]

Cryogenic air separation is the primary process by which air is distilled into its components. The only inputs are air and electricity to drive the main air compressor. I imagine the electricity used to drive the air-sep process is less than the plant produces by a considerable margin.

The plant could have a dedicated air-sep unit or have oxygen delivered by truck in liquid form.

Re:how much power does it use

[Anonymous Coward]

Suppose we build machines that take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and convert it into cars, buildings, boats, kittens, cotton plants, boats, puppies, etc. Suppose that these machines allow us to take as much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as we want. Suppose we've also got solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal power stations powering everything.

Wait. You're saying we can lick global warming by mass producing kittens and puppies?

Re:how much power does it use

[Anonymous Coward]

Suppose we build machines that take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and convert it into cars, buildings, boats, kittens, cotton plants, boats, puppies, etc. Suppose that these machines allow us to take as much carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as we want. Suppose we've also got solar, wind, geothermal, and tidal power stations powering everything.

Wait. You're saying we can lick global warming by mass producing kittens and puppies?

Curses!! Bob Barker, you've doomed us all!!!!

Re:how much power does it use

[maharg]

you are saying it is more that 100% efficient ?

Re:how much power does it use

[eugene ts wong]

Even if plants can't get us out of this mess, they can still make it easier for us to get out of this mess.

Re:how much power does it use

[eugene ts wong]

Why couldn't we just pump liquid CO2? This way, we won't bury precious nutrients. At least, if it leaks, it will only be CO2, which is quite safe.

Re:how much power does it use

[ichigo 2.0]

I'm saying that burning the coal produces more energy than removing the nitrogen from the air uses.

Re:how much power does it use

[nospam007]

>Consider a cotton plant. ...

Are you saying we should store all the carbon as T-shirts?

Re:how much power does it use

[Thiez]

> So if we have 6 billion people, we could provide say 5 tons of carbon in the form of useful stuff for each person each year.

What you seem to forget, is that it costs energy to make stuff out of carbon. If it costs more energy to produce 5 tons of useful stuff per person per year than we get by burning fossil fuels than we should just stop burning fossil fuels (assuming we want to go carbon neutral). And guess what plants use energy to store CO2 as glucose, more energy than we got by producing that CO2 in the first place.

> Why not grow the algae, dry it out, and burn it in the power plant?

Because solar panels are more efficient than the algae. Growing plants for no other reason than to burn them is madness.

Re:how much power does it use

[Thiez]

Even if it leaks slowly over the next few million years, global warming over such a period is much easier to adapt to than global warming over the next 100 years.

Re:how much power does it use

[jimdread]

What you seem to forget, is that it costs energy to make stuff out of carbon. If it costs more energy to produce 5 tons of useful stuff per person per year than we get by burning fossil fuels than we should just stop burning fossil fuels (assuming we want to go carbon neutral).

Yes, it costs energy to make stuff. We get most of our energy from fossil fuels. We make lots of stuff. Just about all of it contains carbon. Some of that carbon comes from the atmosphere. We're already using fossil fuels to make stuff. That stuff is already storing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

People will stop using fossil fuels when there is a cheaper and better replacement. Notice how hardly anybody uses whale oil for lighting any more. Even though people aren't burning whale oil for light, we still have lighting. People who think that we're going to stop using fossil fuels before we have some other form of energy aren't being realistic.

And guess what plants use energy to store CO2 as glucose, more energy than we got by producing that CO2 in the first place.

They get the energy from the sun. Same as the plants that died and turned into coal got their energy from the sun. It doesn't matter if it takes them more energy, because it's free.

> Why not grow the algae, dry it out, and burn it in the power plant? Because solar panels are more efficient than the algae. Growing plants for no other reason than to burn them is madness.

An algae pond is a hole in the ground with water in it. It could have some pipes on the bottom for pumping carbon dioxide into the water. An algae pond might cost $1 per square meter. Solar panels cost $1000 per square meter. Since solar energy is free, it wouldn't matter if plants were only 10% as efficient as solar panels. It'd still be much cheaper to have an algae pond than solar panels. And solar panels don't absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Algae ponds can do that.

Re:how much power does it use

[jimdread]

Are you saying we should store all the carbon as T-shirts?

Kittens, puppies, and t-shirts, yes. Amongst other things. Why not? Would you rather have a t-shirt, or the knowledge that some carbon dioxide had been pumped underground?

Re:how much power does it use

[maharg]

I guess you must be right, there must be a net gain, otherwise why would they bother ? Unless they are intent on destroying the planet - Mu-wha-ha-haaarrgh ! Time for a lie down....

Re:how much power does it use

[ThePhilips]

If dumped in the air as N2 one would hope precautions against exposure to high concentrations are going to be stringent.

Actually my first reaction was that they removed N2 to avoid it pass through burning chambers. As much as N2 is nonreactive, yet some small part of it under not so high temperatures can oxidize, producing both NO and NO2. Forgot which of them, but one of them is considered toxic anther is simply harmful. e.g. the pollution map uses concentration of nitrous oxide as an index.

Exposure to high concentrations of N2 (which is plain asphyxiation) can be avoided easily - easily compared to actual lack of any methods extracting the potentially harmful oxides from air.

Re:how much power does it use

[Anonymous Coward]

really, how much CO2 is generated in removing the nitrogen from the air used to combust the lignite ?

None. The nitrogen is removed at site, with means provided by the power plant. The nitrogen is then sold.

There are a lot af other negative things that has been covered by Swedish (and probably German) press, that's not mentioned in this article, but this is not one of them.

Re:how much power does it use

[TooMuchToDo]

But when you burn the algae, the CO2 is released again. Once a solar panel is made, it produces power for upwards of 25-30 years (minimum) without any further CO2 being put in the atmosphere.

I'd like to also point out that Nanosolar's new method of printing solar panels almost has the price down to $1/Watt. Within the next 1-2 years, solar is going to be *dirt* cheap.

Re:how much power does it use

[TooMuchToDo]

The energy to make the products made from plants comes from the sun. If I build thousands upon thousands of homes for the poor in Mumbai from bamboo, the energy comes from the sun and the CO2 is trapped in the raw materials of the home. Unless you burn your home down, the CO2 is trapped there for the life of the home.

Re:how much power does it use

[JAlexoi]

>> It will decay eventually, and release the CO2 again.
Seal properly and apply pressure and you get coal from that paper, not CO2. Since decaying paper does not release CO2. The bacteria will release less CO2, anyway.

Re:how much power does it use

[jimdread]

But when you burn the algae, the CO2 is released again.

So pump it back into the algae pond. Carbon can be stored in algae just as well as it can be stored by pumping it underground.

Once a solar panel is made, it produces power for upwards of 25-30 years (minimum) without any further CO2 being put in the atmosphere.

An algae pond can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Currently, solar panels can't do that.

I'd like to also point out that Nanosolar's new method of printing solar panels almost has the price down to $1/Watt. Within the next 1-2 years, solar is going to be *dirt* cheap.

Hopefully that will happen soon. Or maybe we can use those "500 times better" solar panels that the schoolboy invented.

US should be fired up too.

[Brigadier]

With the US being one of the leading producers of coal, they should be the biggest proponent of such technology. This is in light of US industry/Economy going to the crap yard.

http://www.worldcoal.org/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=188

Re:US should be fired up too.

[geekoid]

The coal industry ni the US has gotten waiver after waiver for our cleaner plants.
I dont believe they will ever implement an expensive technology unless someone puts a gun to their head. But they can't becasue what do you do if they just decide not to operate?

Re:US should be fired up too.

[AndersOSU]

Nationalize them?

Even in a country that holds capitalism as dear as the US (is that still true this week? - John McCain has changed "my friends" to "comrades") if a power plant sticks out their tongue and says they're not going to deliver power, the government will swoop in. And then the government can make the changes needed.

Re:US should be fired up too.

[RyoShin]

But they can't becasue what do you do if they just decide not to operate?

It becomes a government utility, just like it should be.

Re:US should be fired up too.

[CrimsonAvenger]

Nationalize them?

Even in a country that holds capitalism as dear as the US (is that still true this week? - John McCain has changed "my friends" to "comrades") if a power plant sticks out their tongue and says they're not going to deliver power, the government will swoop in. And then the government can make the changes needed.

Hint: the problem isn't really that the coal plants are intrinsically against being clean. They're not, but that's neither here nor there. The problem is that the plants cannoit be shut down - we're operating so close to capacity that offlining plants for upgrades is impractical.

And building NEW plants invokes the God NIMBY! Which is why new coal plants (clean or otherwise) aren't being built.

Re:US should be fired up too.

[badboy_tw2002]

The power transfer lines should be a public utility because like roads or telephone lines its a monopoly and needs to be tightly regulated. Where you power comes from, what your car is, or who does your long distance should be up to the consumer. Cable lines and telephone lines should be like water and power - you can choose your provider, but the infrastructure should be government controlled because the consumer doesn't have a choice but "take it or leave it".

Re:US should be fired up too.

[joocemann]

The coal industry ni the US has gotten waiver after waiver for our cleaner plants.
I dont believe they will ever implement an expensive technology unless someone puts a gun to their head. But they can't becasue what do you do if they just decide not to operate?

Strange you should say that. About 3 years ago I recall President Bush signing a bill to allot $2BN to coal industries to make clean coal plants. My friends and I had joked about coal-powered hoverboards in the future, etc.... So if these companies are requiring waivers, what did they spend the 2BN on? Oh right... THEY TOOK IT HOME!

Next Month's News: US Gov pays $100BN in tax dollars to save failing Coal companies in economic crisis. While citizens are outraged at the privatization of profits and socialization of loss, elected officials calmly responded "The terrorists are going to kill us all. Oil is how they profit from us! Only coal can save us!"

Re:US should be fired up too.

[rrohbeck]

But... but... that would cost money!

It would also curb a lot of kids' asthma and acid rain, but who gives a damn about that?

Re:US should be fired up too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Government takeover followed by an open market auction?

If they were told to play by the rules or we'll find someone else who will, guess which choice they will make?

steps

[nimbius]

step 1: capture emissions
step 2: store emissions
step 3: ? (put back where we found it, if we cant see it then its OKAY!)
step 4: TEh PROFIT!!1!

Re:steps

[BlowHole666]

What is the problem with putting the putting the emissions back in the ground?

Re:steps

[Van Cutter Romney]

The separated carbon dioxide will be cooled down to -28 C and liquefied.

And exactly how much energy are you spending on liquefying the CO2?

Re:steps

[jellomizer]

That is what happends with plants.
Plants take the C02 convert it to O2. And when they die all the carbon goes underground. There are huge amounts of C02 underground natually anyways, there isn't much of negative from it. Heck we may go and use it in the future to keep our soda fizzy.

Re:steps

[R2.0]

"What is the problem with putting the putting the emissions back in the ground?"

Because that would be a technological solution to the problem. One of reasons that there is still a lot of resistance to the Global Climate Change crowd is that there seems to be a "hair shirt" mentality about it - they aren't yelling because the Earth is going to melt down. Rather, they really want us using fewer resources because we are BAD for doing so. It is a behavior change they are looking for, not really a change in the percentage of CO2 put into the atmosphere. So a technological solution that allows the world to continue using energy like a drunken sailor uses his paycheck is unacceptable.

Re:steps

[Joey Vegetables]

Ask the folks in Lake Nyos. Natural CO2 escaped from a lake and killed something like 2,000 people. That CO2 needs to be stored very securely and away from centers of population.

Re:steps

[Breakfast Cereal]

Huh, I thought it was because the earth has a funny way of shifting around and things don't always stay buried for very long which could be problematic for pressurized gasses, but I guess it's because of anti-technology ecofascists.

Re:steps

[Beezlebub33]

Nothing, if they stay down there. A lot, if they don't. However, coal is this nice solid, not-going-to-move-around-alot kind of stuff. CO2 is this pushy, likes-to-go-everywhere kind of stuff.

So, there is a chance that it's all going to come out into the atmosphere anyway, maybe, kind of. The hard part is figuring out what the probability of that happening is.

Re:steps

[Anonymous Coward]

You Forgot:
Step 5: Leave behind large pile of radioactive coal ash. But otherwise its a good plan.

Re:steps

[Ethanol-fueled]

At least until we learn to properly dispose of waste without "sweeping it under the rug".

Re:steps

[mblase]

Ask the folks in Lake Nyos. Natural CO2 escaped from a lake and killed something like 2,000 people.

Gonna be mighty hard to ask them about it, then.

That CO2 needs to be stored very securely and away from centers of population.

I believe that was exactly the idea behind burying it "3,000 meters underground into a depleted inland gas field in Altmark."

And the article doesn't mention it, but IIRC the reason for burying the waste CO2 is that it gets absorbed by the surrounding rocks and converted into harmless minerals, rather than letting it escape into the atmosphere again. Someone with more geological expertise than I have will have to explain that, though.

Re:steps

[Smidge204]

There's certainly that, PLUS:

It does not reduce our dependence on a limited resource. We're gonna run out eventually and the sooner we find an alternative the better.

It just so happens that most, if not all of the truly "renewable" energy cycles we've found are also very eco-friendly. Kind of like a double-win.
=Smidge=

Re:steps

[Anonymous Coward]

I actually have experience with this type of combustion. There is approximately a ~30-35% "penalty" for running the ancillary equipment. The ancillary stuff would be the on-site oxygen separation plant and the CO2 liquefaction.

With the penalty, a 30 MWe* plant would only be putting out ~20 MWe. This is potentially a huge loss of revenue for a generator. Though in the case of regulated utilities, the question becomes how much would YOU be willing to pay for this type of control (because they'll raise you're rates)

(*I know TFA sidebar says 30 MWth)

Re:steps

[Anonymous Coward]

yup, use it to grow algae, store the algae under ground

Re:steps

[electrictroy]

What we need to do is switch to CARBON NEUTRAL sources like living trees. The trees absorb the CO2. We burn the trees. The CO2 is released and absorbed by the next generation of trees. (Same with biofuels like soybean-diesel.)

No more global warming.

Another solution is to have fewer human beings (like China does with its one-child per family to shrink population). Not a popular solution, but we never heard the Roman Empire or ancient C'hin Empire worry about fuel shortages or melting ice caps. That's because there were only 1/2 billion people..... lots of room and fuel for everybody. Nature wasn't impacted.

Most of today's fuel and global warming issues are simply a byproduct of overpopulation: Too many people gobbling-up too many resources. If we continue down this road, the next major problem won't be "How do we fuel our cars?" but "How do we fuel our bodies" as food shortages run rampant in the U.S. and E.U. (Sorry I don't buy the Asimovian future of an Earth sustaining 50 billion people.)

Re:steps

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on. We all know that when you put the emissions back into the ground they travel through it. Do you really think we need to give any more CO2 to China?

Re:steps

[mrjimorg]

Strange. They pump CO2 into the ground and they're heros. I throw a plastic bottle away and I'm a villian. Same result-> Carbon in the ground.

Re:steps

[plague3106]

Well, then we'd be burning trees much, much faster than they could replenish. That's why they aren't really renewable.

Nuclear is really the only way to go. Reprocess and re-use the fuel in breeder reactors, and we'll have enough energy for a long time, and little dangerous waste.

Re:steps

[avandesande]

somehow natural gas has stayed underground for millions of years.

Re:steps

[unjedai]

Huh, I thought it was because the earth has a funny way of shifting around and things don't always stay buried for very long which could be problematic for pressurized gasses, but I guess it's because of anti-technology ecofascists.

It's being done, it's being studied, and so far the science indicates it is pretty safe. Pressurized gasses - like natural gas - have existed underground for ages and we've managed to deal with them.

Re:steps

[HTH NE1]

IIRC the reason for burying the waste CO2 is that it gets absorbed by the surrounding rocks and converted into harmless minerals.... Someone with more geological expertise than I have will have to explain that, though.

Geological? Try alchemical. Carbon doesn't transmute to other elements to form new non-carbon minerals. Mineralize carbon and you get slate, coal, or diamond.

Better to have a living process rebind that carbon with hydrogen into useful biochemicals and free up the oxygen for later recombustion.

Re:steps

[sumdumass]

Don't bring logic and practical conclusions from science and real life observations into this discussion. What are you trying to do, be sane about these things?

Gosh, if there is one thing that pissed me off more then anything else is someone pointing out the obvious. If it wasn't for you, we could be completely over looking that aspect of reality and still have a reason for why this is bad.

Oh hell.. what happened, where am I? I feel like I was hit by a truck.

Re:steps

[PietjeJantje]

Because that would be a technological solution to the problem.

That would mean the giant deficit is also a technology solution to the problem?

Great. No, the problem is we, on multiple levels, be it financial, energy, trash & pollution, are living off the future generations, and that my friends, makes us extremely low class. It started with the baby boomers, and they will take this behavior to the grave, making sure all the hard decisions about pensions will pass their generation. Before that, it is said, people actually worked for the futures of their children in the opposite of our ego-centric ways. But seemingly we now get at a stage were these "rights" to live off them are taken for granted and that that is not ok, even forgotten. We -do- have obligations. That said, I know it's naive to expect us to behave otherwise, as many would rather grab what they can out of life with the least effort, and leave a burning planet behind than bore themselves with obligations when they're no longer here. As a species, we're going for the Darwin award.

Re:steps

[Anonymous Coward]

Or maybe it is because the energy required to put it into the ground may cancel out the energy generated in the first place.

Re:steps

[sumdumass]

To be reasonable, the lake Nyos issue wasn't caused by storing Co2, it was cased by a volcanic vent pumping Co2 into the lake and then a sudden stir of the saturated waters.

In other words, this is a totally different situation. We wouldn't be able to pressurize Co2 underground in the same way that is at Lake Nyos and the big problem there wasn't necessarily the Co2 escaping from underground but the Lake acting like a sync and then mixing and releasing the Co2 all at once in a rapid action. The venting into the lake alone wasn't enough to cause the problem. This is why their solution was to pump the cold water from the bottom of the lake where it can store more Co2 to the top of the lake so it will warm and release the Co2 faster. If they turn enough water, there shouldn't be a release again that could kill people like that.

Re:steps

[tompaulco]

If you think it started with the baby boomers then you just haven't been around long enough. It's been going on since the amoeba. Natural selection worries about continuation of the species. Individuals are more concerned about continuation of themselves.

Re:steps

[HTH NE1]

CO2 is this pushy, likes-to-go-everywhere kind of stuff.

Well, at least in a common unheated and unstirred air mixture it likes to go down.

Re:steps

[Anonymous Coward]

I see Your point.
non renewable:
1. Chop some trees.
2. Chop some more trees until there are no more.
3. ???

renewable:
1. Mine some uranium or thorium ore.
2. Process and enrich ore into the fissile fuel.
3. Feed breeder reactor with the fuel.
4. ???
5. Process radioactive waste into fissile fuel.
6. See step 3

OK. I'm all for nuclear now (throws away greenpeace membership card).
Honey, get into the car, We are going to shopping to buy breeder reactor!

Re:steps

[Peter La Casse]

Strange. They pump CO2 into the ground and they're heros. I throw a plastic bottle away and I'm a villian. Same result-> Carbon in the ground.

Have you thought about hiring a P.R. agency?

Re:steps

[Dan667]

How about when there is a cat 5 hurricane every week? How about when you cannot go outside at all because your skin will cook in the sunlight? Does nuclear power start to look better then? I think you can broaden your scope to look at what bad could really be. Nuclear remains an option and the risk can be managed better than daily weather or cosmic radiation problems.

Re:steps

[mcbutterbuns]

Chernobyl was 20 years ago. The technological advances we have made since then have been astounding. I feel that another go at nuclear at this time would be a great idea.

Not only have we learned from our past but we've also learned a great deal more.

Re:steps

[Anonymous Coward]

The same argument applies to solar and wind power. And both of them can be managed a hell of a lot easier than nuclear power and without the risks.

Re:steps

[Locklin]

Better to have a living process rebind that carbon with hydrogen into useful biochemicals and free up the oxygen for later recombustion.

Free concentrated CO2 would be great for greenhouse/hothouse operators.

Re:steps

[fire5ign]

Actually, if it's radiation you're concerned about, being next to a dirty-ass coal plant would be a problem, because coal is slightly radioactive, and after ignition, some of that radioactive dust is emitted. see http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste

Re:steps

[mathmathrevolution]

No. Throwing a bottle away is much better than pumping C02 in the ground because when you throw away a bottle you aren't throwing away Oxygen.

Re:steps

[Bryan Ischo]

That's really awesome how you trivialized, misrepresented, AND over-generalized climate change arguments all in one single post! You should win an award for the best straw man of the day!

Just a few specifics on why your post was stupid:

1. There are many people in this world with an opinion about global warming. Grouping everyone together into one 'they', and calling them a 'Global Climate Change crowd' both misrepresents a position as if it is held by everyone with an opinion about global climate change (it isn't), and seeks to discredit that opinion by giving the label 'crowd' to the group, insinuating that they are just a rabble-rousing mob. Lame.

2. Many/most people who think that climate change is an important issue, and accept scientific evidence that it is caused to a large degree by human activity, want to directly address climate change itself, not press some personal philosophy of minimalism. It just so happens that reducing resource usage is the single most effective and eminently most available way to reduce the causes of climate change. You are confusing the most practical solution with a moral agenda. Lame.

In conclusion: your post is lame. And it's lame that people have given in a +5 insightful mod, which only demonstrates that your fallacious logic indeed pulled the wool over the eyes of many. Or more likely, that you have supporters in people who also don't mind using fallacious logic to advance their OWN ideological agenda.

Re:steps

[Anonymous Coward]

That study was about the amount of radiation a coal plant gives off in normal operation compared to that of a nuclear plant. Unfortunately, a nuclear meltdown is not normal operation and the radioactivity emitted by just Chernobyl, for example, is larger than that of all the coal plants operated in the last century. So, for the last 70 years, nuclear has been more radioactive than coal.

Re:steps

[Dan667]

If you put wind and solar farms on every inch of the earth (oceans, mountains, every where) with current technology it would not make enough power. It is not an option, it is only a part of the solution. Nuclear is an actual option to make enough power with today technology.

Re:steps

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, lets do the math. Current solar cells have about 10% efficiency. The earth has 6371 km radius which presents an area of 1.28 * 10^14 m^2 to the Sun. The average flux on sunlight on the ground is 1 KW/m^2. And if overcast conditions dropped the efficiency 50%, you would still have 6.38 * 10^15 W. Humans currently use 1.5 * 10^13 W. This means that with these terrible assumptions, we could produce almost 500 times the power that we currently do with just solar power. Considering that newer photovoltaic cells (in design) have efficiencies of over 30%, we are talking over 1500 times. Nice try.

Re:steps

[R2.0]

Response:

1. The climate change "community" may not be monolithic, but you certainly don't serve as an example to its diversity - see response to #2.

2. If you wanted to "address climate change itself", you would be looking for ways to directly change the climate - great big mirros out in space, whatever. You are instead proposing to address climate change by a secondary method - reducing the amount of CO2 that goes into the atmosphere. You propose that the means of doing that is to "reduc[e] resource usage" because that "is the single most effective and eminently most available way to reduce the causes of climate change" EXCEPT, in the YEARS that environmentalists have been screaming for people to change their habits, IT HASN'T HAPPENED. If it was so easy and direct, it would be done already. It turns out that controlling the behavior of 6 billion people, or 275 million if you only count the US (And after all, it is all our fault) is pretty damned hard, as evidenced by the fact that it hasn't succeeded despite massive effort by those who want that opinion changed.

Now, a reasonable person would look at that situation and say "Hmmm, this isn't working. Let's try something else to get the CO2 out of the air". The fact that the mainstream Global Climate Change "movement" rejects these options out of hand indicates that there may be a different agenda at work. That's why I used words like "seems" - the motives of many in that movement seem suspect because their stated goals don't jibe with their actions.

As for my use of the word "crowd", you yourself state that "There are many people in this world with an opinion about global warming". From Merriam Webster: "a group of people having something (as a habit, interest, or occupation) in common". Just because you associate the word "crowd" with "rabble-rousing mob" doesn't mean that's my meaning; in fact I'd say it offers a window into what you really think about the cause you associate with.

Re:steps

[drpimp]

I can see nuclear as being one option, but one must weigh nuclear vs solar. The sun has been around for 4.5 or so billions of year, and is about half of it's age before it becomes a red giant where which our planet will be consumed by it. Compared to how many years of nuclear energy can be sustained from building (hundreds ... thousands ????) of nuclear plants, I think the winner by landslide is solar. The Sun not going anywhere that we can foresee for a long time with a relatively endless source of energy respectively. That's my opinion!

Re:steps

[afabbro]

Not a popular solution, but we never heard the Roman Empire or ancient C'hin Empire worry about fuel shortages or melting ice caps. That's because there were only 1/2 billion people..... lots of room and fuel for everybody. Nature wasn't impacted.

You're referring to an empire (Rome) that depopulated the gamestock of northern Africa in order to stock its coliseums.

Re:steps

[afabbro]

In conclusion: your post is lame. And it's lame that people have given in a +5 insightful mod, which only demonstrates that your fallacious logic indeed pulled the wool over the eyes of many. Or more likely, that you have supporters in people who also don't mind using fallacious logic to advance their OWN ideological agenda.

Huh. So you're saying that someone you disagree with has a post highly moderated while yours is not must mean that either (a) everyone here is just fooled, or (b) there's a secret cabal that is pulling the strings. I'm sorry, what were you saying about fallacious logic again?

Re:steps

[Profane MuthaFucka]

All that means is that a lot of people can be fooled. The philosopher Barnum noted this already. There could be other reasons, and there are, why the hair shirts actually give a rats ass about you and your planet, even though you obviously don't.

Re:steps

[sricetx]

they really want us using fewer resources because we are BAD for doing so. It is a behavior change they are looking for, not really a change in the percentage of CO2 put into the atmosphere.

Agreed. And this is why I don't like most environmentalists. They are too into ideology. Most are smug and arrogant too. In my opinion, a large number of these people just like to think they are better than everyone else.

Re:steps

[afabbro]

There could be other reasons, and there are, why the hair shirts actually give a rats ass about you and your planet, even though you obviously don't.

How's that jumping to conclusions working out for you?

Re:steps

[rtechie]

This means that with these terrible assumptions, we could produce almost 500 times the power that we currently do with just solar power.

One of those assumptions was covering every square inch of the earth's surface with solar cells, including the oceans, which is pretty unfeasible. Secondly, your measure of efficiency is off by an order of magnitude due to this thing called "night", half of the day solar cells don't work compared to the continuous operation of nuclear plants, so the real measure is closer to 5%. I'll give you the nonexistent 30% cells.

Now how much of the earth's surface can we cover with solar cells? I don't know, but I'm willing to bet it's a lot less than 1%. Which means that your 30% cells can't meet our CURRENT needs.

Nice try.

Re:steps

[Anonymous Coward]

One should try very carefully when proposing a correction to not look like an idiot.

One of those assumptions was covering every square inch of the earth's surface with solar cells, including the oceans, which is pretty unfeasible.

This was in response to a post that claimed that this was possible.

Secondly, your measure of efficiency is off by an order of magnitude due to this thing called "night",

This was taken into account. The same sized circular profile of the earth always faces the Sun. Check the numbers. It wasn't calculated based on the surface area of the Earth because not every part (unit area) of the Earth receives the same flux. Instead it was calculated based on a circle of the Earth's profile (which accounts for all of the sunlight that the Earth will receive at all times without having to make up funny definitions like days and nights).

Re:steps

[tkw954]

somehow natural gas has stayed underground for millions of years.

Actually, the natural tendency is for it to percolate out of the ground. We only find natural gas (and oil) in lens-shaped non-porous rock formations which trap the rising gas before it reaches the surface. This is called an anticline. Luckily, the most economical use for the CO2 produced is to pump it back down into the trap, where it will presumably remain for another million years.

Re:steps

[Massive146]

This isn't energy you can run your TV on, but in this Mother Earth News article they describe how one acre worth of poplar trees can produce enough wood to be "firewoodselfsufficient." (See "Wood?Lots!") Obviously, the entire world population can't do this, but I thought it was an interesting and semi-relevant article.
Hybrid Poplar Tree Projects

Re:steps

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that coal fired plants already release more radioactivity than nuclear plants, don't you?

Re:steps

[PietjeJantje]

Heh, you might be right. Wasn't this an argument a while back why there's nothing but silence from space?

Re:steps

[DavidTC]

And while we're at it, we must weight operating an automobile by gas vs. operating one by pushing it! Surely more of us could push our vehicles around when we aren't in a hurry!

News flash: Solar is the energy of the future. It is not the energy of now.

And some of the changes we have to do, like switching off gasoline for cars, are going to require more electricity.

Re:steps

[joocemann]

"What is the problem with putting the putting the emissions back in the ground?"

Because that would be a technological solution to the problem. One of reasons that there is still a lot of resistance to the Global Climate Change crowd is that there seems to be a "hair shirt" mentality about it - they aren't yelling because the Earth is going to melt down. Rather, they really want us using fewer resources because we are BAD for doing so. It is a behavior change they are looking for, not really a change in the percentage of CO2 put into the atmosphere. So a technological solution that allows the world to continue using energy like a drunken sailor uses his paycheck is unacceptable.

You have no idea what you are talking about.

Go get an education; specifically in chemistry, ecology, and biology. Then maybe you won't be spewing completely ridiculous hypotheses for why educated people trust scientific research that provides serious data that implicates global climate change. If you could actually understand the data it would be hard for you to pretend it doesn't exist.

LEARN. Do it before you speak.

Re:steps

[electrictroy]

>>>Well, then we'd be burning trees much, much faster than they could replenish.

The obvious solution is to not do that: Only burn trees at the rate where they can be replaced. Nuclear power is only a solution until the uranium runs-out, so it is only a temporary fix.

Solar power is probably a good way to supplement the tree-burning for electricity production.

Re:steps

[electrictroy]

Volkswagen will be selling a 240 MPG car in 2010. Granted it only carries two people, but still that's a step in the right direction. For driving to work-and-back that's all a person really needs.

Re:steps

[electrictroy]

Rome depopulated African wildstock??? Hardly. The animals that were present in 1 A.D. are still there today. The Romans did not drive anything to extinction.

My point: Imagine if today's world only had 1/2 a billion humans. Would we even be having this discussion about global warming? Nope. The problem would not exist.

Re:steps

[Ironchew]

Trolls need food, too.
Fossil fuels have caused much more devastation to the environment than nuclear accidents ever have. If you want me to prove nuclear accidents can never happen/God doesn't exist, then you've got me in a tight spot. Reactor designs have improved vastly since the ban on all new U.S. nuclear reactors 30+ years ago, and some of those designs can prevent meltdowns altogether. I have some of the same misgivings about nuclear power as the anti-nuclear movement (mostly related to mining), but I honestly don't think mountaintop removal or coal mining is any safer. I know you're just talking out of your ass about preferring a coal plant next door. The main difference between the two, though, is that nuclear reactors contain their waste and coal plants don't.

Re:steps

[theshowmecanuck]

and then it mixes with water in the aquifer and forms carbonic acid and dissolves the earth and we are all left floating in space.

Re:steps

[R2.0]

Boy, you really showed me. I provided a theory as to people's motivations ASIDE from the scientific reasons, and you totally obliterated my argument by pointing out that environmentalist are simply right, and that their motivations are correct.

I've never been subject to such a rhetorical lashing. I've soiled myself in shame, and will NEVER, EVER question people's motivations again. You have proven to me unequivocally that everything a person says should be taken at face value as true and right, and I'm mortified that I ever thought otherwise.

Re:steps

[Anonymous Coward]

> Unfortunately, a nuclear meltdown is not normal operation

Huh?

Re:steps

[Thiez]

> So, for the last 70 years, nuclear has been more radioactive than coal.

Due to a single accident that is extremely unlikely to happen with modern nuclear reactors. But let's rephrase GP for you: shutting down most coal plants and replacing them with nuclear plants would decrease the amount radioactive stuff that is released in the atmosphere each year.

Re:steps

[joocemann]

Boy, you really showed me. I provided a theory as to people's motivations ASIDE from the scientific reasons, and you totally obliterated my argument by pointing out that environmentalist are simply right, and that their motivations are correct.

I've never been subject to such a rhetorical lashing. I've soiled myself in shame, and will NEVER, EVER question people's motivations again. You have proven to me unequivocally that everything a person says should be taken at face value as true and right, and I'm mortified that I ever thought otherwise.

Thanks for the compliment. I'm glad you'll take your ridiculously irrational flamboyance and stick it where your education came from.

P.S. If you understood simple chemistry you wouldn't feel like you're being lied to by thousands of scientists. Do you know what the scientific method is? If you understood that, you'd find science to have much more validity. If you also came to understand the impact of various chemicals on living organisms, or the heavily evident theory of evolution regarding current organism's adaptations to current environments.... well.. you'd be in for a lot of actual understanding, wouldn't you?

Go learn. Wipe your butt. Go learn.

Re:steps

[Kumiorava]

I don't know why you pick apart only the parts that are suitable to you? Grandparent poster was off in all of the cases by a lot.

* 6.25*10^19 J, the yearly electricity generation of the world as of 2005
* 5.5*10^24 J, the total energy from the Sun that strikes the face of the Earth each year

From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(energy)

If the solar panels catch 10% of the solar radiation, we would be able to generate ~10000 times more electricity than consumed today if planet was covered completely with solar panels. North America is about 5% of earth, so covering only North America would generate ~500 times more electricity than we currently use. In case we cover Arizona, which gets in average more solar radiation than earth in general, we could provide more than enough electricity for whole world. With current technology it would be ~5 times more electricity (just based on land mass) than current electricity usage.

I used heavy approximations and didn't double check anything, so I might be wrong...

Re:steps

[Kumiorava]

Where this kind of bullshit comes from? If you just used common sense you would realize how badly you are wrong. Let's think, here are some hints:

1. All consumed or produced electricity eventually becomes heat.
2. All energy generation (apart solar/wind/whatever) will generate heat more than electricity.
3. Solar panels and nuclear reactors are comparable (not order of magnitute difference) in electricity production efficiency.

Essentially what you are saying is that if the sun suddenly died we would be fine because our nuclear power plants would be generating more heat than sun. I guess you also figured out where the global warming comes from.

Re:steps

[Socguy]

I can't tell what side of the fence you're on so thumbs up on a thoughtful post!

You make a good point, a technological solution to a technological problem is often simply a band-aid solution. In the grand scheme, we could manage the climate in several ways, be it: Carbon capture, spraying salt's into the air, or maybe building a giant umbrella in space. But in the end, you still have to ask: why?

On the surface, the climate change we are experiencing today is mainly a result of excessive production of CO2 and, if motivated, we can technically manage that or at least do an end run around the issue. But under the surface, it's a symptom of our resource consumption binge and if/when we tackle Climate Change another symptom is likely to rear it's ugly head; perhaps peak resources.

So again, Why? Why would we want to lurch from crisis to crisis? Why would we spend all this time and energy and money to enable ourselves to keep doing the same old? Is it to buy ourselves time or is it because there are many powerful interests invested in the status quo? I don't know. What I do know is that I like my lifestyle today and I would very much like to figure some way that my children don't wind up back in the stone age.

Re:steps

[Socguy]

Reactor designs have improved vastly since the ban on all new U.S. nuclear reactors 30+ years ago, and some of those designs can prevent meltdowns altogether.

True, but people designs haven't.

Not-so-random question: I wonder were wind, solar, and Geothermal would be if the billions invested in nuclear had gone their way instead?

The main difference between the two, though, is that nuclear reactors contain their waste and coal plants don't.

Umm, Nuclear reactors contain their waste until they need to be refueled. Anyone who wants an nuclear waste dump in their state raise their hands...

Another stupid question: What do you do with a nuclear plant when it's time to decommission it?

Re:steps

[TooMuchToDo]

How much stupid can you fit into a post? No wonder you posted anonymously. A coal plant releases more radiation than a nuclear power plant you twit.

http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html

Former ORNL researchers J. P. McBride, R. E. Moore, J. P. Witherspoon, and R. E. Blanco made this point in their article "Radiological Impact of Airborne Effluents of Coal and Nuclear Plants" in the December 8, 1978, issue of Science magazine. They concluded that Americans living near coal-fired power plants are exposed to higher radiation doses than those living near nuclear power plants that meet government regulations. This ironic situation remains true today and is addressed in this article.

Re:steps

[Bryan Ischo]

Response to your response:

1. I don't expect to serve as an example for anything, since I haven't even given my own opinion on global climate change. It is only you who are assuming that I am a part of the 'crowd' that you are giving straw man arguments against. I merely pointed out the fallacies of what you had written.

2. The best method for reducing global warming, assuming that you believe a) that it is caused to a significant degree by man's activity and b) that global warming is a bad thing, is whatever method is most effective and practically possible. These criteria are greatly influenced by technology, by the current energy infrastructure of human kind (or at least, industrialized nations), and also by how willing people will be to go along with disruptive changes to their lifestyles. Reducing resource usage requires little to no technology or changes to energy infrastructure, but it does require changes to people's lifestyles. Some people think that it's a good idea to push this approach because the only thing that has to change is people's behavior, which *seems* like an easier thing to do than coming up with new technology or changing energy infrastructure. Whether or not this is practical given people's resistance to change is debatable.

Whether or not you agree with the approach, your implication that people who continue to press for resource usage reductions are unreasonable is unwarranted. I expect that anyone who feels that this is important would not take the fact that attempts to get industrialized nations to reduce resource usage has only been partially successful, if at all successful (and once again, this can all be debated), as a reason to stop advocating what they think is right. And I would be very surprised if there is *anyone* who would advocate *only* resource usage reduction as the solution to the global climate change problem.

Anyway, I haven't even said what I think of global climate change or its causes, or what I think the best solution might be. I've just pointed out that there are rational arguments for global climate change that contradict your straw men. My point was entirely about how you trivialize and misrepresent other people's opinions and additionally disparage them by calling them "the global climate change crowd", not about the specific merits of any particular approach to reducing global warming.

It's kind of funny though that you replied to my post about what a straw man you'd set up against "the global climate change crowd" with another straw man in which you describe weak arguments which you assume I'd make or believe in about climate change. I guess you'd win another award, for "best straw man in defense of a straw man."

As a final point, please don't be so disingenuous about using the word 'crowd'. You know full well what you were implying when you used that term instead of any of a number of less loaded terms you could have used.

Re:steps

[R2.0]

I believe it is you who need to "go learn" - specifically, reading comprehension.

In my original post, did I ONCE deny that global warming exists? Did I deny any facts about global warming? I believe a close reading of what I ACTUALLY said will show that I did not.

I was questioning the motives of the people who insist that behavior change is the ONLY way to stop climate change, discounting possible technological solutions. Note that that category does NOT include scientists, because generally they stick to descriptive statements, not prescriptive ones. A scientific report will say "Global warming is happening, and CO2 put in the air by Man is the cause" or "If the rate of CO2 pumped into teh atmosphere drops to Level X by Time Y, we believe Z will happen." It is politicians and activists who take those scientific results and translate them into "And therefor buy hybrids, carbon credits, etc, etc."

I view ANYONE telling me what I should be doing with suspicion. Why should I believe that the government and corporations are lying to me out of greed an lust for power, but Al Gore is telling the truth out of the purity of his motives? They are ALL people, and there aren't a whole lot of living saints out there.

You immediately jumped to conclusions on my views based, not on WHAT I said, but on the fact that I cast aspersions on the motives of people you admire. Maybe you can take a course in humility while brushing up on reading comprehension.

Re:steps

[jimdread]

No. Throwing a bottle away is much better than pumping CO2 in the ground because when you throw away a bottle you aren't throwing away Oxygen.

Yes you are. Plastic bottles are often made of PET, which has the molecular formula C10H8O4. The O4 stands for 4 Oxygen atoms.

Re:steps

[blind biker]

There is a difference between natural gas and CO2: the latter is heavier than oxigen or nitrogen (i.e. air) and will stay in the low areas, potentially suffocating aerobic animals.

Could the CO2 escape in a massive way from these underground layers? It depends from case to case, but I am sure that I would feel much safer living on top of a deposit of natural gas, rather than CO2.

Re:steps

[lyml]

Covering 1% of the earths surface with 5% efficient solar cells would give us 40 terrawatts of energy, which is a little less than three times as much energy as the current worldwide energy consumption.

80 petawatts[1] of energy worldwide * 1% surface area * 5% efficiency = 40 terrawatts of energy
current usage is 15 terrawatts[2] of energy, next time you're trying to be a smart ass do your maths correctly

if you don't beleive my numbers you can read wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_energy#Energy_from_the_Sun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_consumption#Consumption

Re:steps

[Colin Cordner]

> Luckily, the most economical use for the CO2 produced is to pump it back down into the trap, where it will presumably remain for another million years.

Presuming, of course, that i) whomever rammed the giant, steel straw into that formation didn't create fractures in it through which the gas might percolate, ii) that the drilling holes are capped in some fashion in which they themselves do neither represent nor become a structural weakness in the formation, iii) that a structure which was air-tight against the escape of natural gas is also air-tight when filled with a fundamentally different substance, iv) that, contrary to human nature and commercial acquisitiveness, that best practices will, of course, *always* be followed and that we will *never* over-inflate a structures beyond it's physical limits in order to save a few hundred-thousand dollars, and v) that we really know what we're talking about, as opposed to fooling ourselves into thinking that we know what we're talking about.

So, yes, assuming that everything was done perfectly in the past, is being done perfectly in the present, will be done perfectly in the future, and that we have perfect knowledge of what we're doing to begin with; then we have ourselves a genuine air-tight case! :-)

Me? I'm waiting for the ever-entertaining Earth-shattering kaboom.

Re:steps

[Colin Cordner]

Nuclear is really the only way to go...

Or reducing the amount of energy that we consume by not watching TV while driving our lovely SUVs to a McDonalds thirty miles away (with the air-conditioners on full-blast, of course) to eat too many cheeseburgers, necessitating a one-hundred mile drive to the nearest office of a reputable plastic-surgeon for liposuction, whereupon we will park our ample selves in the air-conditioned waiting-room to watch TV for an hour on the new plasma display.

We could just stay home with a cold beer, read a book, and eat a vegetable... but that's just crazy-talk! Bring-on the nukes, I says!

Re:steps

[Colin Cordner]

somehow natural gas has stayed underground for millions of years.

Good gracious; if only it would stay in my wife for that long!

Re:steps

[joocemann]

No no there kiddo. I didn't jump to conclusion based on your view, what I did was jump on you for making ridiculous assumptions about global warming activism as being a 'control' issue, that 'they' want to control you.

Here's your original statement:
--------------
"What is the problem with putting the putting the emissions back in the ground?"

Because that would be a technological solution to the problem. One of reasons that there is still a lot of resistance to the Global Climate Change crowd is that there seems to be a "hair shirt" mentality about it - they aren't yelling because the Earth is going to melt down. Rather, they really want us using fewer resources because we are BAD for doing so. It is a behavior change they are looking for, not really a change in the percentage of CO2 put into the atmosphere. So a technological solution that allows the world to continue using energy like a drunken sailor uses his paycheck is unacceptable.
-----------

I think that it is pretty ridiculous to point fingers at 'they' and say what you are saying. Most people, scientists or educated citizens, that are concerned about global warming are looking for a solution to the problem. 'They' are largely not discriminate of a 'technological' solution (as you misrepresented the act of the article) as the answer, nor are 'they' concerned with directly some ethical/moral 'badness' that you suggest. What 'they' want is a stable and expectable ecosystem for our species as well as others to maintain our evolved presence on earth. Technological solutions would not be ignored by intelligent global warming activists.

So next time you want to point fingers and bring up ridiculous assumptions, you'll want to do it when someone who knows better isn't looking. That way you won't get attacked for such stupid claims. It isn't about control, its about an answer.
-----

Now, about the pumping CO2 underground. I think there have been enough discussions about this specific article here on slashdot for you to see that the potentials for problems in pumping CO2 underground. The potential for this 'technological solution' to become completely ineffective and slap us in the face tenfold.

A more viable technological solution might include some form of enzyme that converts CO2 molecules into carbon crystals with oxygen as a product. This would basically be a return of the products to the reactants. Another solution might involve using microorganisms that have been specifically produced, such as algae, to consume and metabolize that CO2 (respirating O2) into lipid vacuoles (making usable oil).

As I said before, your assumptions about people are ridiculous and extreme. We (as in most people concerned about human activity changing our environments) are not opposed to technological solutions at all; we are not trying to control you; we are simply seeking responsibility and solutions regarding human impact on the environment that could lead to a rapid change for which many species are not adequately evolved.

Re:steps

[sumdumass]

Well, Natural gas is explosive too because it is primarily methane (90% CH4 or better) with a few other gasses mixed together with it. Now, before processing, natural gas has a lot of water in it too which would make it closer to as heavy as Co2. But either will dissipate well in the atmosphere unless conditions are just right for them not to (a small window). There isn't much to worry about because the atmosphere isn't really vacuum tube and has wind currents and all to move the Co2 around. This is how your car exhaust mixes with the atmosphere and the root theory behind global warming. Otherwise we could just build pits with soda lime in it near roads, factories and such and cure global warming that way.

I will admit that in a closed space with no wind, sure Co2 can be (is) problematic. But the practical reality of this in real life is rare because simple venting to the outside world overrides the threat. Otherwise, you would almost die when you live in a basement apartment along a busy road because of the Co2 in the car exhaust or if you lit a candle or incense.

Lake Nyos had a catastrophic incident back in the 80's but that was because a volcanic vent pumps Co2 into the lake which at those depths, the cold water saturates with the Co2 and when it is warmed, it releases it. A major venting incident caused the water to rapidly circulate which in turn caused the lake to dump not only the Co2 vented but a good portion of the Co2 that was synced in it. The solution was to place a pipe and pump into the lake allowing the cold water on bottom to be circulated to the top which warms the water and releases a good amount of the Co2 safely and slowly or controlled in a safer manor. The engineering estimates show that the accident should never happen again on the scale it did and that it is reletively safe to live near the lake again.

At the depths the Co2 will be stored, it moves so slowly that is can be measured pretty accurately. If a leak does occur, there should be ample warning and perhaps some safety devices like open pits with Co2 measuring devices in them could be used. But I'm confident that any fears over that which would be present with natural gas are negligible because the very thing that alarms you would also help keep it underground, it's weight. And at the depths that we are looking at, you have to remember that the atmosphere is compressed already at 3,000 meters which is almost 2 miles underground and is almost twice that of at sea level. The Co2 would weigh almost twice as much making it already "on the bottom". There isn't much to worry about

Re:steps

[Anonymous Coward]

The CO2 can be used to make plastics, instead of storing it in the ground.

Re:steps

[tkw954]

You're right. I said "presumably", but I probably meant "hopefully".

Re:steps

[DavidTC]

Right, and it's worth pointing out that gasoline usage is non-linear with traffic.

At some point, traffic jams disappear, and with even less use we can turn some traffic lights into stop signs and undo some of the things that make traffic safer and smoother by slowing everyone down. (And stuff like dedicating a no-yield right-turn lane at multilane intersections that no longer need as many lanes.)

If we magically had 75% the traffic tomorrow, we'd only be using something like 65% of the gas. With 50% traffic, and some work, we'd only be using about 25%.

Meanwhile, it works the other way, too. Every 1% increase in traffic is probably something like 1.3% increase in gasoline usage, at least in near-capacity areas. (And almost all the country is near capacity.)

So while higher-MPG cars reduce gasoline usage, I'm suspecting we're at the point that reducing the sheer number of cars, period, is the best way to go. (Especially since cars take forever to swap out.)

Re:steps

[rtechie]

The way you, or whoever it was that posted, phrased it I was under the impression that they were calculating total area.

To be blunt, if large-scale solar power generation was feasible someone would already be doing it. The IN PRACTICE costs I've seen for various projects (like solar powered independent cell and wi-fi towers), is astronomical. Highly suspect theoretical calculations do not impress me.

Re:steps

[rtechie]

Looks likes those 30% cells might not be so unrealistic.

http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/29/1814247

I still think large-scale solar has logistical problems.

How much does it cost?

[swm]

What is the final cost of the generated electricity?
In $/KW-Hr?

Lake Nyos for next generation.

[Anonymous Coward]

What will exactly happen when the liquid CO2 will eventually warm up undergorund and then some future seismic event will open a crack ?

I hope this storage is somwhere in Sahara desert, not in the heart of densly populated Europe.

JAM

Re:Lake Nyos for next generation.

[R2.0]

"What will exactly happen when the liquid CO2 will eventually warm up undergorund and then some future seismic event will open a crack ?

I hope this storage is somwhere in Sahara desert, not in the heart of densly populated Europe."

Future Headline:
"Earth Farts; Thousands die in Europe"

Followed by the world continuing to revolve about its axis.

Re:Lake Nyos for next generation.

[nemo11]

Obligatory:
The world rotates around its axis, and revolves around the sun. It wouldn't be /. if nobody pointed this out.

Re:Lake Nyos for next generation.

[AJWM]

Nothing happens, even in the unlikely event that a seismic event could open a crack 3000 meters (almost two miles) deep.

Aside from the fact that CO2 is denser than air and will tend to stay in the bottom of whatever hole it's put in, the hole that it is being put in is a depleted gas field -- meaning that the rock is porous enough for the CO2 to disperse through it like a rock sponge. It takes a bit of effort to get the gas back out again. Plus, CO2 mixed with ground water forms a mild acid which tends to react with rock to form carbonates, chemically locking the CO2 in place. (With some variation depending on the specific subsurface rock, of course.)

Re:Lake Nyos for next generation.

[afidel]

Exactly, look at it this way:How many people are expected to die each year through faults in the storage system if n percent of electricity is produced this way vs how many people are expected to die from the expected increase in global temperature caused by NOT using this storage methodology. If the former is less than the latter then it's a good idea to use the technology. It's like the Alar scare, an order of magnitude more people are estimate to have died from cancer due the deceased consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables caused by the scare then ever would have died from the chemical.

Re:Lake Nyos for next generation.

[R2.0]

Damnit - I typed "rotates" and then changed it.

Re:Lake Nyos for next generation.

[john.r.strohm]

No, CO2 mixed with ground water does NOT necessarily form carbonates and lock into place.

CO2 and water forms carbonic acid, which etches (dissolves) limestone, forming underwater caves and rivers. This is how phreatic (water-filled) caves are formed.

Depending on local conditions, you can get some impressive ones. Florida has an amazing assortment of water-filled caves. Wakulla Springs (south of Tallahassee FL) has a HUGE system, that has been extensively mapped by the Woodville Karst Plain Project http://www.wkpp.org/.

Mexico has an incredible system of water-filled caves, down around Akumal, just down the road from Cancun.

Full Disclosure: Friends of mine dove with the WKPP, doing the exploration.

Re:Lake Nyos for next generation.

[AJWM]

Where do you think the various stalactites, stalagmites and flowstone formations in those caves (once the water drains) comes from? (I know about the water-filled caves, I've dived Ginny Springs, seen cenotes in the Yucatan, and tromped through miles of Mammoth Cave, still water filled at its lowest levels). You won't find caves in sandstone, though.

You apparently missed the "(With some variation depending on the specific subsurface rock, of course.)" in my original post.

Re:Lake Nyos for next generation.

[AshtangiMan]

So then revolving doors are called that because they too revolve around the sun? :)

Re:Lake Nyos for next generation.

[Kagura]

The earth also revolves around its center of gravity with the moon. :)

Re:Lake Nyos for next generation.

[bhiestand]

In case you didn't know what the GP was referencing, Lake Nyos was the site of a natural disaster that killed approximately 1,700 people when the lake released 1,600,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[cefek]

That's not the solution to the waste by-product problem. It only pushes it another decade, maybe two away. Storing waste CO2 underneath the surface is just asking for more problems. What happens if that gas is suddenly injected into the atmosphere? What happens is we all start living on, or maybe a couple of mile over, the ticking bomb?

Every energy production that has such a dangerous by-product is not the solution to our problem. Then again, we should think whether the hydrogen is. Don't want to sound like an asshole, but that water vapor those hydrogen-fueled cars produce is not going to vanish either.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[fifedrum]

yeah, why the heck don't they convert the CO2 into something usable, like C and O2?

Maybe build another generating plant next door that supplies the energy required to break the molocules...

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Breakfast Cereal]

Don't want to sound like an asshole, but that water vapor those hydrogen-fueled cars produce is not going to vanish either.

If only there was a way of controlling the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere and pumping the excess into a vast transportation network that carries it to the ocean.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[VeNoM0619]

Uhh? Why not just use nuclear power, store it into Yucca Mountain (as was planned, until people complained) opposed to storing the nuclear waste in the nuclear plant itself.

SAME concept as the article...

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right to insist that it should be safe, but they're proposing to store the CO2 in geological structures that have held the far more volatile natural gas for millenia.

And don't worry about water vapour -- excess water vapour has the habit of precipating out of the water in the form of rain.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[FireFury03]

I'm a bit confused as to why sticking a small quantity of vitrified radioactive material under ground is a huge problem for the tree-huggers, but sticking vast amounts of liquefied CO2 in the ground is ok...

I'm all for diversification of energy sources, but I really don't understand why all the environmentalists are happy with this but not fission...

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[lantastik]

yeah, why the heck don't they convert the CO2 into something usable, like C and O2?

Maybe build another generating plant next door that supplies the energy required to break the molocules...

CO2 is a extremely stable molecule and it would take a great deal of energy to separate the two. The amount of energy it would be take would be counter-productive to the initial problem you are trying to solve.

Until we can figure out how to simulate photosynthesis or just go ahead and the let the trees do it, this just isn't the best solution available.

However, neither is pumping it in to the ground in my opinion. ...since no one is asking, I guess it doesn't really matter though.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Sockatume]

Nobody is considering the mole people issue, either.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Iridium_Hack]

Funny thing is, lignite is almost pure Carbon. Burning it with Oxygen produces energy. If we split the resulting CO2 back into C and O2, our energy surplus turns into an energy deficit and gives us what we started with. Only we went to a lot of trouble for nothing. But what is really accomplished by storing it under the earth? Plants Do need CO2. Why not give them some extra CO2 and they may work more efficiently to produce growth and give off more oxygen. Has anyone ever really tested this?

Global Warming - A new and improved version of Global Cooling.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Mr. Underbridge]

Then again, we should think whether the hydrogen is. Don't want to sound like an asshole, but that water vapor those hydrogen-fueled cars produce is not going to vanish either.

Since that hydrogen was probably produced by electrolysis of water, it's pretty much a zero-sum game. But water isn't to be worried about, since rain is a pretty good way of regulating the water vapor in the atmosphere.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[fringd]

you are not a comedian are you?

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Conception]

When CO2 leaks into the water table, people's children don't start growing a third arm.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[BlueNeutrino]

Storing CO2 into a depleted gas field is likely to last a lot more than a few decades. Hint: for how long did the natural gas stay in there? There are CO2 sinks which, given no emissions, can reduce CO2 concentration back to pre-industrial levels in a few centuries. Then it won't matter as much (if at all) when increased quantities of CO2 are released from their storage.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it would seem that programmers these days are going more and more towards C++ and C#, so the need of C is not as common these days.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[GroeFaZ]

Iantastik's humor threshold is an extremely stable one and it would take a great deal of explaining to reach it. The amount of explaining it would take would be counter-productive to the initial problem of telling a good science joke.

Until we can figure out how to simulate good joke telling or just go ahead and let Monty Python do it, this just ins't the best solution available.

However, neither is beating it into your head in my opinion. ...since no one is laughing, I guess you just didn't get it though.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[dwye]

> but I really don't understand why all the environmentalists are happy with this but not fission...

Because a 30 MW plant is small, even compared to Shippingport #1, let alone to the 1000MW plants which were the last ones built (in the USA, at least). When it gets large enough to be more than a pilot program, they will turn against it. Originally, the environmental movement was in favor of nuclear power, until it became apparent that some one might actually make a profit providing it in a few years, as opposed to sometime in the far future.

The other explanation for the Wilderness Society, et al, switching on nuclear power is that it reduced the cognitive dissonance from working with people that were normally their enemies. If this is true, they will still flip to hating whatever CO2 sequestration methods are eventally chosen.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[moderatorrater]

You're right, oil fields where we know natural gas was successfully stored for millennia will only postpone the problem a few decades. This'll never work long term.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[LWATCDR]

Well since most of the Hydrogen will hopefully come from splitting water it will end up falling as rain back to Earth.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[LWATCDR]

That is the good thing about vitrified storage. It is GLASS. Glass doesn't get into drinking water. Also people forget that seawater already contains Thorium and Uranium.
We shouldn't be storing that stuff in Yucca mountain anyway. We should be reprocessing it and make more fuel out of it. What we can not make into fuel we should "burn" in special reactors in to short half life isotopes that decay to ore levels in just around 100 years and use vitrified storage for that.
So the real answer to the question of to why people fear nuclear power is.
They are ignorant, scared, and they have been lied to by the people that use them as their base of political power.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[FireFury03]

When CO2 leaks into the water table, people's children don't start growing a third arm.

CO2 leaking into the water table would be just as serious as radioactive material leaking into the water table, unless you like drinking carbolic acid.

On the other hand, with CO2 being a soluble fluid, it seems more likely that it might leak than a solid, vitrified material.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Anonymous Coward]

*whoosh!*

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[pushing-robot]

Uhh? Why not just use nuclear power, store it into Yucca Mountain (as was planned, until people complained) opposed to storing the nuclear waste in the nuclear plant itself.

SAME concept as the article...

Same concept?

    Situation 1: "Sorry, folks, the storage facility leaked into the local groundwater. You'll find a little bit of carbonation in your water supply."

    Situation 2: "Sorry, folks, the storage facility leaked into the local groundwater. You'll find a little bit of Cesium-137 in your water supply."

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Abreu]

How about using it to grow fast growing, oxygen-producing plants?

Someone already suggested underground algae but it could be something else...

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[rally2xs]

Its not that tough of a problem. Feed this CO2 to plants in the presence of sunlight. Instant C and 02. Been going on for millions of years. The plants should even grow faster.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[milwcoder]

Feed it to the trees... by releasing in the forest. *duck*

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[jason.sweet]

Why not give them some extra CO2 and they may work more efficiently to produce growth and give off more oxygen.

Sounds like a good idea, but I hear it doesn't scale very well.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Warbothong]

yeah, why the heck don't they convert the CO2 into something usable, like C and O2?

Maybe build another generating plant next door that supplies the energy required to break the molocules...

Python is more maintainable and easier to make cross-platform, and personally I think that Orange can get cheaper SMS prices.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Nadaka]

How about we stop using retarded 50 year old nuclear technology that only extracts 10% of the usable energy from nuclear fuel and throwing the rest away?

We could feed all our energy needs for centuries on feeder-breeder reactors. Not only this, but the final waste products of this process remain radioactive for only a few centuries vs thousands of years that conventional nuclear "waste" lasts. That makes the issue of disposing of nuclear waste vastly more simple.

I don't really promote 100% nuclear, closer to 50/50 feeder reactors and solar thermal power production. We don't really need to use any coal, gas or oil to power the grid at all. Hell we could even rid ourselves of fossil fuels for most transport as well if we invested in grid powered train tracks and charging rails for electric vehicles on the interstates and major highways.

This is all available on current technology, and it would cost vastly less than the mining, pumping, refining and foreign entanglement costs associated with limited fossil fuels. Why not take this step now? Instead of a hundred years from now when there will not be enough fossil fuels left to fight over. America and Europe were some of the first nations to go through the industrial revolution. Its time to pass the torch to the third world. Its time for us to move beyond industrialization. Its not just good for America, or Europe, its good for the entire world.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[VeNoM0619]

Same concept? Situation 1: "Sorry, folks, the storage facility leaked into the local groundwater. You'll find a little bit of carbonation in your water supply." Situation 2: "Sorry, folks, the storage facility leaked into the local groundwater. You'll find a little bit of Cesium-137 [wikipedia.org] in your water supply."

More like... "Sorry, folks, its in fucking Yucca Mountain underneath layers of concrete, where no seismic activity occurs, deep underground , nowhere near civilization.

Whereas, people push against storing underground are currently forcing them to store nuclear waste on site at the power plants which are near civilization.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Ichijo]

Until we can figure out how to simulate photosynthesis or just go ahead and the let the trees do it...

I think we should let algae reactors do it.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[FireFury03]

We shouldn't be storing that stuff in Yucca mountain anyway. We should be reprocessing it and make more fuel out of it.

I agree entirely. But at the moment it is, sadly, cheaper to bury it than reprocess it.

However, people seem to get irrational when it comes to anything involving radiation. When the situation is looked at rationally, it is quite simple: The nuclear industry is extremely well regulated. Sure, they deal with some pretty nasty materials, but large chunks of the less well regulated non-nuclear industry deal with chemicals on a daily basis that are far more dangerous. Everything has risk, but if we are willing to accept the risk of other industries, why are we not prepared to accept the (arguably smaller) risk of the nuclear industry?

So the real answer to the question of to why people fear nuclear power is.
They are ignorant, scared, and they have been lied to by the people that use them as their base of political power.

Early nuclear accidents certainly haven't helped matters - Chernobyl, for example, sticks in everyone's mind and many people forget that the Russian nuclear program was very badly regulated and that reactor design would never have been allowed in the West, even in those days.

There are certainly some people who lie in order to further their own political agenda, but sadly the people they lie to often believe what they are told and perpetuate the lie. Misunderstandings of more recent events end up reinforcing the misinformation - for example, Three Mile Island is often waved around as an example of why nuclear is still dangerous, but if these people actually looked into such incidents instead of taking what they are told at face value, they would realise that they are often good examples of how safe nuclear power can be, even when the shit hits the fan. And misinformation is rife (intentional or otherwise) - I was at the Centre for Alternative Technology (Wales) a few weeks back and was annoyed to see them propagating the "there is only enough uranium to last 50 years" myth.

The current situation seems to be that many people have the "nuclear bad" message so firmly ingrained in their understanding of the world that they won't even listen to people trying to dispel the misinformation. These days it seems that the anti-nuclear crowd don't even need to explain why they think nuclear is bad - they've been banging on about it for so long that everyone just accepts that it is bad without any understanding as to why.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[LWATCDR]

So they are ignorant, scared, and have lied to by those that use them a base for their political power.
Chernobyl can not happen at any modern western reactor. Chernobyl would have been an expensive mistake at a light water reactor with a containment build. Heck even with their graphite moderated reactor and a containment building it would have been a LOT better than it turned out to be.
I remember reading an article about the Russian nuclear power program around the time of Three Mile Island. The Russians where claiming that their reactors where so safe they didn't need containment buildings... Well I am a good driver but I wear a seatbelt.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[bloobloo]

Ever noticed how soft drinks go flat? The carboNic acid isn't stable at atmospheric conditions - it isn't going to dissolve in water in the first place.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[sumdumass]

This is probably an area where solar would make a good choice. We could use the solar concentrator mirror arrays like the ones used in the towers (not PVs but the ones that actually liquefy sodium to power hydro generators) and use the concentrated UV to cause the C to separate and mix with other gases or liquids as it passes through.

I could be similar to making calcium carbonate from soda lime except we use concentrated sunlight and the UV portions to liquefy the soda lime and bubble the Co2 through it for a near instant reaction with water and building material or a commercial lime source for agriculture as a byproducts. If we are lucky, the uses of the calcium carbonate could offset the increased costs of the cleaning of the combustion exhaust and perhaps be more profitable then plain coal.

I don't know, I haven't run any numbers but it's a thought.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[sumdumass]

If only the air was at saturation levels so we would know for sure that everything we put into the air would follow that path instead of just increasing the reletive humidity which has been increasing lately...

The easiest way of checking that is to look at the dew points. They have been raising on average which means that the humidity is going up and the air doesn't automatically reject anything extra that we put into it. BTW, Water vapor or humidity is a GHG just like Co2.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[funaho]

I wonder how many people realize just what kinds of nasty chemicals are sitting at oil refineries? An explosion or accident at a refinery near a civilized area could easily be on par with a nuclear accident.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[kabocox]

More like... "Sorry, folks, its in fucking Yucca Mountain underneath layers of concrete, where no seismic activity occurs, deep underground , nowhere near civilization.
Whereas, people push against storing underground are currently forcing them to store nuclear waste on site at the power plants which are near civilization.

I vote that we move/store all those people that hate nuclear waste and underground storage of anything at the existing Yucca Moutain place for the next 5-10 years... sooner or latter they will all die. Then we can safely and quietly store our nuclear waste there.

The only potential problem that I foresee is anti-nuclear storage protesting zombies.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[NeutronCowboy]

I fully expect that anything that still moves after being in extended contact with nuclear waste would actually use it as fuel. It'd be win-win-win! Not only do you have a safe place to store it without opposition, but it gets reprocessed by nuclear-fuel eating zombies! The only thing you might have to worry about then is nuclear farts. Though I'm sure they could be reused as props on some of MTVs reality shows.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Hatta]

So the real answer to the question of to why people fear nuclear power is.
They are ignorant, scared, and they have been lied to by the people that use them as their base of political power.

Which, oddly enough, is the same reason people fear drugs, terrorism, pornography, immigrants, internet pedophiles, and just about everything else. FDR was right, the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. Our irrational reaction to our irrational fears has been, in almost every case, worse than the actual threat we're afraid of. America is no longer the Land of the Free, the Home of the Brave. Instead we're the land easily manipulated cowards.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called weather.

You think moisture just accumulates in the atmosphere?

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[oatworm]

All right, but that plant better be green!

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[oatworm]

No seismic activity meaning, of course, that it's located in a dormant volcano in one of the most geologically active states in the United States.

Nowhere near civilization, of course, meaning within 100 miles of an urban area containing over 1,000,000 people.

Oh, and this nuclear waste is being transported by... fairy magic? Or, are we just going to use the railways and ship the waste through a bunch of urban areas? Either way, this should be fun.

If only we actually could recycle the waste instead of throwing it away or something...

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[pushing-robot]

I don't have a problem with nuclear power, I was just pointing out burying CO2 and burying radioactive waste were not exactly the same thing.

And while Yucca Mountain may be one of the safest places to store waste (to the best of our ability to predict), you also have to do a risk analysis of storing nuclear waste at the power plant vs. transporting thousands of tons of highly radioactive waste cross-country.

In any case, it would make far more sense to build new IFR-type reactors that produce negligible long-term/weapons-grade waste, rather than always being a train derailment or storage leak away from an ecological nightmare.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[oatworm]

Actually, the reason we can't reprocess nuclear fuel has little to do with cost - Japan, France, and countless other nuclear nations do that all the time, which is why they don't need Yucca Mountain-equivalents. Due to proliferation concerns, the US government has had a wary-to-schizophrenic relationship with nuclear fuel reprocessing. This nice little fact sheet (note - it's a PDF) helps illustrate that.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[__aailrp9629]

Every energy production that has such a dangerous by-product is not the solution to our problem. Then again, we should think whether the hydrogen is. Don't want to sound like an asshole, but that water vapor those hydrogen-fueled cars produce is not going to vanish either.

If you use water as your hydrogen source it sure is, after the process to separate hydrogen from water becomes efficient enough.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[DavidTC]

Hello, McFly?

We're talking about storing it pressurized underground. To continue your example, it does not take an amazing amount of pressure to dissolve CO2 into water...a cheapo plastic bottle can hold enough pressure to do so. I don't know what 'pressure' they're talking about, but seriously, you can create enough pressure by hand to dissolve CO2 in water.

I don't know how realistic the threat of it escaping into the water supply is. Or the threat of that then forming a high enough enough concentration of carbonic acid to actually harm people is. But acting like it can't form it at all is stupid.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[DavidTC]

I don't know what you mean by 'underground algae', algae cannot grow underground as it needs light, but that's my idea too...we grow algae up here, pump it down there along with the salt water we already pump into oil wells.

It works out nicely, because, like I said, we're already pumping salt water down most oil wells, so we can just grow it in that salt water.

Likewise, there are plenty of 'empty' oil wells that we can switch back on, pumping out the salt water and pumping back down the salt water+algae.

Forget about trying to capture it at coal plants, the problem is the net carbon.

It will die down there, and possibly rot, but that will take time. And as is pointed out, we're good at keeping natural gas down there, we can keep methane and other byproducts of rotting down there.

And, hilariously, this might end up making us more oil, eventually.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Anonymous Coward]

More like... "Sorry, folks, its in fucking Yucca Mountain underneath layers of concrete, where no seismic activity occurs, deep underground , nowhere near civilization.

That is incorrect .

An earthquake fault line exists underneath Yucca Mountain:

Title: Yucca fault line might spring surprise
Author: Keith Rogers
Date: September 24, 2007
Publisher: Las Vegas Review Journal
Link: http://www.lvrj.com/news/9954856.html

Bore hole drilling operations at the planned Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site have turned up preliminary evidence that an earthquake fault line passes beneath the place where project officials want to build concrete pads for storing thousands of tons of highly radioactive spent fuel.

A letter and maps from the U.S. Geological Survey obtained last week by the Review-Journal show that the Bow Ridge fault passes directly beneath the footprint of a pad where spent fuel canisters would age or cool down before they are entombed in a maze of tunnels inside the mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Curmudgeonlyoldbloke]

Has anyone ever really tested this?

Yes.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/business/30carbon.html

http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=14361282

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[NotBornYesterday]

*whoosh*!

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[NotBornYesterday]

Yeah, CO2 leaking into your drinking water is serious business. If you aren't careful, you might have Perrier tap water.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[zippthorne]

It doesn't matter where you store it, if it's hot (and not just chemically active) it's not waste yet.

The current nuclear power plan is a joke. It's like buying a happy meal, eating one fry, and throwing the rest away.

The only thing worse is that it was devised by someone who should absolutely have known better, but who instead has given credence to the idea that genuine experts, engineers, shouldn't be allowed anywhere near public policy.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[zippthorne]

You do know that you can buy two-liter bottles of carbolic acid at your local supermarket, don't you? If you pay extra, you can even get it in glass containers undiluted by waste from the corn industry.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[zippthorne]

Maybe in the future in a hydrogen economy. At the moment, though, electrolysis does not account for very much of the nation's hydrogen supply.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[FireFury03]

You do know that you can buy two-liter bottles of carbolic acid at your local supermarket, don't you?

You can get all sorts of nasty chemicals from the supermarket that I wouldn't choose to drink, wash in or put fish in. CO2 dissolving in the water table would be a serious problem.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Anonymous Coward]

America has always been the land of easily manipulated cowards.
It's how they've been manipulated that has twisted the country into the power it has today.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Mr. Underbridge]

Maybe in the future in a hydrogen economy. At the moment, though, electrolysis does not account for very much of the nation's hydrogen supply.

I should have said 'in the best case' - you're right, most of it now probably comes from fossil fuels.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[Anonymous Coward]

Guess this was intended to be a stupid joke, but there's a thread of truth in the proposition.

High purity CO2 gas is actually quite a desired byproduct. 98% isn't quite up there but it's a start. CO2 is and can be used as a precursor for materials production--namely, some carbon fiber production pathways require it such that they become more cost-competitive if a lot of pure, cheap, CO2 gas became available.

One of the reasons carbon fiber is expensive nowadays is because of the energy required in its production. Normally, such CO2 for carbon fiber production is generated using energy intensive processes from regular air, which isn't cheap due to energy prices, so these pathways aren't commonly used in large scale carbon fiber production.

iow, you'd be creating energy from the clean coal tech, and coupling the high quality CO2 production to make carbon fiber. Carbon fiber production would be cheaper and more widely available. Which in turn may help carbon fiber replace steel in vehicles, thus saving even more energy in the long run. (For those that don't know, the major impediments to carbon fiber usage is the lack of expertise worldwide, lack of material on an absolutely huge production scale, and lack of machining/technique to get it in production products such as automative parts such as frames).

I wouldn't be suprised if in the near future some carbon fiber production plant goes up near these clean coal facilities--cheap raw material, cheap energy.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[ArsenneLupin]

Glass doesn't get into drinking water.

In Russia...

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[bloobloo]

But the gp's comment was about DRINKING the carbonic acid. By the time it gets processed, it will be gone.

It is an entirely unrealistic worry. Unless you are trying to drink the water in a CO2 atmosphere, it will come out of solution as soon as it is exposed to the air.

Re:Solve the problem, for pete's sake

[fifedrum]

bingo. While I was posting for lols the point was serious enough. Feed it back into bio reactors and use the resuling bloom to fuel our vehicles ( or more power plants) the algae uses the sun to convert the stuff back into something useful.

wouldn't you love to have an algae stack in your yard for processing any old crud into fuel?

Excellent plan! Prepare for the Future!

[m4cph1sto]

We MUST start accumulating vast reserves of liquid carbon dioxide NOW, so that in 50 years, when we're in the deadly throes of Global Cooling, we can release it to the atmosphere to warm the planet and save us all!

Re:Excellent plan! Prepare for the Future!

[Dave Tucker Online]

Hmm. You seem to have meant that sarcastically, but maybe not a bad idea.

Re:Excellent plan! Prepare for the Future!

[Anonymous Coward]

Mr. President we must not allow a CO2 gap!

Gonna be a fun disaster...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ideally, in the future, the gas will be carried by pipeline to underground storage

The failure mode of that pipe should be fun. Concentrated CO2, evaporating to gas as it shoots out the crack, turning into a thick fog that settles to the ground and suffocates everything nearby. Like a death cloud. It'll make for some fun camera footage.

Depressurize the liquid to 1 atm and it turns into either a solid or gas, right? CO2 gas suffocates and is heavier than air, or dry ice jams the pipe...

Why store CO2?

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's pure CO2 they are capturing and storing, why don't they just release it into the Amazon rain forest?

Storing CO2 is not a viable solution, but giving it to the trees, who live on it and will convert it into 02, is!

Re:Why store CO2?

[inviolet]

If it's pure CO2 they are capturing and storing, why don't they just release it into the Amazon rain forest?

Storing CO2 is not a viable solution, but giving it to the trees, who live on it and will convert it into 02, is!

Rainforests do not consume a net quantity C02. What carbon they do capture during photosynthesis is later reburned during respiration or released later during decomposition (e.g. bacteria, termites).

If rainforests were net consumers of CO2, then they would be accumulating a carbon store somewhere. This would take the form of vegetation mass (not increasing) or a coal seam somehow forming underneath all the tree roots (not observed). The carbon has to go somewhere if the trees are liberating any oxygen.

The only forests that do liberate oxygen and store carbon are young, growing forests. Mature forests are done -- they are in carbon equilibrium. Only young ones, which result from clearcutting and replanting, harvest carbon. This is why the US carbon credit program for forest owners will only pay out to folks who can prove that their forest is young growth.

And yes, I own a pine forest, and am sick of hearing about this crap.

Re:Why store CO2?

[ArcherB]

If it's pure CO2 they are capturing and storing, why don't they just release it into the Amazon rain forest?

Storing CO2 is not a viable solution, but giving it to the trees, who live on it and will convert it into 02, is!

Great idea. The problem is this:

How do you keep the CO2 in the rain forest long enough to be converted? How do you keep it from blowing away? How do you transport it from Germany, in Europe, to the Amazon, in S. America?

On second thought, it's not such a great idea. Sorry.

Re:Why store CO2?

[electrictroy]

Not all of the dead rainforest is "eaten" by bacteria. Some of it does get buried underground where it remains untouched. Millions of years into the future, our descendants will be able to dig-up coal or oil from those locations.

Of course millions of years is a long time to wait. Which is why it's not practical to use trees to store CO2.

Re:Why store CO2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly. So if we're really serious about getting green house gasses under control we need to cut down all the old growth forests and plant new trees. We should also pave over marshes and wetlands to cut their methane emissions. Finally we should all become vegans so we can eliminate farm animals and their associated methane emissions.

Re:Why store CO2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe clearcutting is somewhat better for the CO2 "consumption" in the atmosphere but it's a complete disaster ecologically. Especially cutting down existing old forests is truly a shame.

Re:Why store CO2?

[asynchronous13]

The only forests that do liberate oxygen and store carbon are young, growing forests. Mature forests are done -- they are in carbon equilibrium.

A study from 40 years ago reported that info. More recent studies have shown that even mature forests continue to absorb CO2.

...once most forests get more than 15 years old they absorb more carbon dioxide than they release, and continue doing so for centuries...

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/09/11/ap5412821.html

Re:Why store CO2?

[Anonymous Coward]

According to a new study published in Nature that compiles data from many previous studies, old growth (primary) forests are net carbon sinks.

MSNBC has an article about it here.

Re:Why store CO2?

[regularstranger]

Carbon Cycle

There is some useful information in the link for anyone wanting to post about CO2. A couple things to point out... carbon dioxide is produced by plant and animal respiration, and notably as a byproduct of decomposition. That is, fungi and bacteria in the soil produce CO2 if oxygen is available, and methane if it isn't. The rain forests do consume CO2, but they also produce it. And as the GP pointed out, the rain forest is not a net consumer of CO2. These processes of CO2 production and consumption used to balance out, but human activities have caused the balance to be upset, and that is why CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere.

Re:Why store CO2?

[jhfry]

Yep... deserts are net consumers of C02. I say you plant vegetation on the edge of a desert and keep a near constant irrigation with CO2 and water. I'm sure that with enough of both you could create a very fertile environment for growth... slowly expand inland and create a forest where there was only sand before.

Then again, it might not work at all.

Re:Why store CO2?

[mauldus]

Interesting thought. If new forests are storing carbon in their mass then why not bury the paper we use instead of recycling it and keep harvesting the carbon (wood) from continually planted trees? I guess the carbon gets released again anyway when the paper biodegrades in the landfills. If only we could figure out a way to store paper (plant matter) where it doesn't release it's carbon (e.g. coal), we could recapture it. Basic carbon cycle.

Re:Why store CO2?

[inviolet]

Interesting thought. If new forests are storing carbon in their mass then why not bury the paper we use instead of recycling it and keep harvesting the carbon (wood) from continually planted trees? I guess the carbon gets released again anyway when the paper biodegrades in the landfills. If only we could figure out a way to store paper (plant matter) where it doesn't release it's carbon (e.g. coal), we could recapture it. Basic carbon cycle.

Yes, exactly. I've thought as much too. From the point of view of carbon sequestration, recycling paper and wood is the worst possible action to take. The stuff should be buried deeply enough to sit inert, rather than shallowly (as in a "sanitary landfill" where it will decompose and emit CO2 and methane.

Nor is "save a tree" a useful goal. If a tree is left mature and standing, then it isn't absorbing a significant amount of carbon any more, in the sense that it is not gaining wood weight at a decent rate. And all the carbon is re-emitted if it dies, falls, and rots. They've got to be clearcut, used, and buried, if the carbon is to remain sequestered.

Re:Why store CO2?

[inviolet]

...once most forests get more than 15 years old they absorb more carbon dioxide than they release, and continue doing so for centuries...

Key questions:

1. Where are the trees putting the carbon? (Gaining additional wood weight I assume... but when they die and fall over, all the carbon is released again by bacteria.)

2. How fast are they sequestering it, compared to the rate at which a clearcut/replant forest would do so?

The lumber industry is greedy, remember? They want to grow the greatest amount of wood in the fastest possible time. They therefore are perfectly motivated to maximize carbon sequestration. And the way that they do it is: for most species, clearcut once every 25-50 years and then replant.

Re:Why store CO2?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is nonsense. Forests absorb carbon and dump it into the trees, and eventually the soil--- the soil mass increases over time, as carbon from falling vegetation or animal poop gets buried in the ground. Forests sequester and bury carbon, as do the oceans.

Re:Why store CO2?

[Peter La Casse]

Also, last time I checked there were no rainforest in the US.

Next time you check, look in the Pacific Northwest.

Re:Why store CO2?

[mathmathrevolution]

The carbon has to go somewhere if the trees are liberating any oxygen.

The carbon does go somewhere. It's called "soil".

Re:Why store CO2?

[m50d]

This would take the form of vegetation mass (not increasing) or a coal seam somehow forming underneath all the tree roots (not observed).

How'd the coal we're burning now get formed in the first place? Since we're going through millions of years' worth so quickly, obviously coal doesn't form very fast and we wouldn't observe a whole lot of it being made, but it's gotta happen eventually.

Re:Why store CO2?

[32771]

Well you should have planted some other kind of trees:

http://www.parks.ca.gov/default.asp?page_id=1151

or if you want something more mundane:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norway_Spruce

Those trees store carbon for a few thousand years, not quite as good as your typical coal deposit but enough to weather most human induced idiocy like the carbon credit program you should rather be complaining about.

After all, those plants were there way before you arrived on planet earth and maybe you find the Araucaria araucana you have in your garden in some of those coal deposits or some of those fossils you have lying around in one of those deserts towards the south.

Re:Why store CO2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever seen leaves under trees?

Re:Why store CO2?

[asynchronous13]

There was a ~10 year study on a single forest plot about 40 years ago. Those researches concluded that after 150 years a forest becomes carbon neutral. This study has been the guiding wisdom ever since.

Last week, a new study was published: Old-growth forests as global carbon sinks. Nature 455, 213-215 (September 11, 2008). It examined 519 forest plots around the world ranging in age from 50 to 800 years and found that most of them are carbon sinks. The analysis of a single forest should not have been generalized to all forests. Your assumptions are founded on information that is now outdated based on this new, more general, study.

1. Where are the trees putting the carbon? (Gaining additional wood weight I assume... but when they die and fall over, all the carbon is released again by bacteria.)

While carbon is stored in wood mass, a majority of the carbon is actually stored in the soil. http://cfs.nrcan.gc.ca/news/473 (I can't find any scientific article that supports your assertion that all the carbon is "released by bacteria")

2. How fast are they sequestering it, compared to the rate at which a clearcut/replant forest would do so?

According to this study, 60% faster than a plantation forest. http://www.enn.com/ecosystems/article/37839 A huge amount of carbon is released when a primary forest is clear cut. Logging primary forests releases ~40% of their stored carbon. Source: Green Carbon: The role of natural forests in carbon storage. ANU E Press (July 2008).

The lumber industry is greedy, remember? They want to grow the greatest amount of wood in the fastest possible time. They therefore are perfectly motivated to maximize carbon sequestration. And the way that they do it is: for most species, clearcut once every 25-50 years and then replant.

Your argument is flawed by assuming that plantation forests absorb more carbon than old growth forests. This assumption is not supported by current research. Additionally, it takes 5-20 years before newly planted forest begins to absorb more carbon than it emits. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/09/080910133934.htm

Re:Why store CO2?

[zippthorne]

Pfft. bullshit. Where's the miles thick topsoil from millions of years of carbon aggregation?

Are you suggesting that the Amazon is fewer than 800 years old?

Re:Why store CO2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Two words: algae farm.

Most species of algae are great at sucking all the available nutrients out of their aqueous environs until the limiting reagent runs out. For diatoms, this is usually silicon. For freshwater, the limiting factor is usually phosphorus. For seawater, nitrogen. In eutrophicated water (i.e. sewage or agricultural runoff), the limiting factor becomes CO2 during the day, and oxygen at night.

1. Dump CO2 into impure water all day.
2. Harvest 99% of algae before sundown.
3. ???
4. Profit.

Before anyone gets REALLY "fired up" about this

[R2.0]

30 MW is tiny. A baseload powerplant in the US runs about 1000MW. So, if this process can scale up 30x, AND we can figure out what to do with 30x the CO2, then I'll get excited.

Nuke plants had many of the same issues - a 1000MW powerplant is NOT simply a Navy aircraft carrier scaled up, although it looks that way in the Visitor's center.

Re:Before anyone gets REALLY "fired up" about this

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's only 30 MW thermal power. So maybe 12 MW electric. Or in proper engineering units, 3 large locomotives.

Re:Before anyone gets REALLY "fired up" about this

[sampson7]

Yes and no. Coal plants are actually less size-dependant than you might think. The technologies tend to be similar, and even most 1,000+ MW coal plants are really just a series of 300-800 MW units within a shared space. As the article says:

In an initial three-year testing program, the Schwarze Pumpe pilot plant is expected to assess how components function together and exactly what proportion of carbon dioxide can actually be separated. Using the information gained, Vattenfall plans to scale up to a 300-to-500-megawatt demonstration plant by 2015 and to 1,000-megawatt commercial plants after 2020.

So they recognize what you are saying and have an actual timeline for addressing the issue.

Lastly, I just want to point out that coal plants are rather like vintage cars. Just as a do it yourself mechanics find working on an older car easier than working on a new computer car.

Re:Before anyone gets REALLY "fired up" about this

[geekoid]

Nuclear produces substantial less waste.
An IFR.
The waste can be stored safely in glass blocks.
Contrary to public perception, nuclear wast isn't stored in leaky metal drums, nor is it an green glowing goop.

Re:Before anyone gets REALLY "fired up" about this

[hyades1]

I guess there must be some kind of law in the United States that says you'd have to build one big plant instead of maybe 5 smaller ones, thus reducing the scale-up proportionally?

Re:Before anyone gets REALLY "fired up" about this

[R2.0]

Yeah - it's the same law that says it's cheaper to put 40 people on a bus than send them in 40 cars. It's the law of economics, and Europe has it too.

Re:Before anyone gets REALLY "fired up" about this

[hyades1]

If you like car analogies (they have a lousy reputation in these parts), you might want to compare the bus with four of those over-sized vans. Seating for 40 or more, and cheaper than the bus.

The nuclear analogy

[Sockatume]

This reminds me of a cynical old analogy about nuclear power, it's clean in the sense that all its harmful wastes are contained. If we could grab all the emissions and bury them underground, then coal would be just as clean as nuclear! Suddenly the analogy doesn't seem as cynical. (Yes, I realise the analogy's not all that sound.)

Re:The nuclear analogy

[bunratty]

Coal would be far cleaner than nuclear if we could contain all the wastes. If the sequestered CO2 leaked out over tens of thousands of years, it would be barely noticeable. If the nuclear waste leaked out over tens of thousands of years, it could render portions of the Earth uninhabitable. Even a tiny bit of nuclear waste leaking after 100 years could be a major disaster.

The major unsolved problem with coal is that it will run out relatively soon. We need to keep working on alternative energy sources so we'll have energy when the fossil fuels run out.

Re:The nuclear analogy

[moderatorrater]

Yeah, and the worst part of the analogy is how harmful the two wastes are in comparison to each other. While radioactivity is bad, the waste isn't radioactive enough to be seriously threatening in the short term. CO2, however, is extremely fatal in large doses, and leaks from the ground have been deadly many times before.

Fortunately, if we ever figure it out, people aren't going to get as worked up about CO2 traveling by rail through their state as they would nuclear waste, because CO2 doesn't have the word "nuclear" in it. It also should be easier to store, since oil fields have held natural gas for thousands if not millions of years, making them ideal candidates for sequestering sites.

Re:The nuclear analogy

[afidel]

Unless high level nuclear waste is leaking directly into your drinking supply in sufficient quantities to raise the radiation level significantly above background levels it's not much of a problem, and breeder reactors eliminate almost all of the high level waste. If it's still hot enough to be dangerous then it's still useful as fuel.

Re:The nuclear analogy

[camperdave]

Unless high level nuclear waste is leaking directly into your drinking supply in sufficient quantities to raise the radiation level significantly above background levels it's not much of a problem...

...apart from its chemical toxicity.

CO2 Processing

[rlp]

Why not put a Coca-Cola bottling plant next door. :~)

Re:CO2 Processing

[BlowHole666]

Now your thinking! or how about a paint ball gun factory or hell just a paintball gun range with free co2.

Re:CO2 Processing

[hypergreatthing]

or a crapload of greenhouses? I bet plants could use that co2.

Re:CO2 Processing

[Thelasko]

or a crapload of greenhouses? I bet plants could use that co2.

Like this?

Re:CO2 Processing

[afidel]

Better is huge clear tubes of water and plankton, use the plankton to make biodiesel.

Re:CO2 Processing

[geekoid]

Becasue that CO2 still gets released.

Re:CO2 Processing

[bloobloo]

That is what they do.

Re:CO2 Processing

[Anonymous Coward]

That's actually the right thing to do, or at least almost the right thing. CO2 is a product, distributed and sold by companies like Airgas that get it by fractonally distilling liquified air (no, really). Sell it to them.

Re:CO2 Processing

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh noes, now the Greens are going to ban Coke!

You know...

[lymond01]

If you just keep your car tires inflated to the proper pressure....

(So when Mr. Obama said that keeping your tires inflated would be as effective as offshore US drilling, he was pretty much right. Is it a long term energy solution? Of course not. But is it equivalent to the very little oil we'd get from offshore drilling? Sure.)

Re:You know...

[R2.0]

"So when Mr. Obama said that keeping your tires inflated would be as effective as offshore US drilling, he was pretty much right.

AFAIK, the "data" he is relying on assumes EVERYBODY in the US is driving on underinflated tires, and that is not the case. If I am wrong, please provide a reference so I can educate myself.

Re:You know...

[mdm-adph]

Remember that Firestone lawsuit involving companies (in this instance, Ford) habitually underinflating cars' tires so they rode smoother?

Re:You know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe we can fill the tires with CO2?

And yes, Obama's idea (or common sense) is a good one.

Re:You know...

[lymond01]

AFAIK, the "data" he is relying on assumes EVERYBODY in the US is driving on underinflated tires, and that is not the case. If I am wrong, please provide a reference so I can educate myself.

Everybody would be driving on under-inflated tires if they didn't keep them properly inflated. It's not like one inflation lasts the lifetime of the car...

Re:You know...

[MozeeToby]

Average people supported drilling because they thought it would lower gas prices. When you come down to it, drilling might lower prices by 2-3%. The average american would save 2-3% of their gas bill by checking and inflating their tires regularly.

On an individual basis, you will save as much or more by properly inflating your tires as you would if and when drilling begins. Not to mention, you can check your tires today, whereas drilling is at best 5 and probably more like 10 years down the road.

Re:You know...

[samkass]

(So when Mr. Obama said that keeping your tires inflated would be as effective as offshore US drilling, he was pretty much right. Is it a long term energy solution? Of course not. But is it equivalent to the very little oil we'd get from offshore drilling? Sure.)

Maybe we should inflate everyone's tires with CO2 from the coal plants.

Re:You know...

[Jhon]

It sounds to me like doing both would be even better.

Re:You know...

[R2.0]

Sooo, what you are saying is that we could save 4-6% by doing both.

And the 5-10 years excuse is lame - if we had done it 5-10 years ago, when it was proposed before (and the same lame excuses made), we would be reaping the benefits now. So if we don't do it now, are we going to be saying the same thing in the future?

Re:You know...

[geekoid]

Actually, if we equips cars with tire that could maintain there own pressure, it would be a long term solution.
Or at the very least, mandate gas pumps be manned, and that tires get checked and filled.

Re:You know...

[Anonymous Coward]

But then what would James Bond breathe when he is hiding in a submerged car?

Re:You know...

[DavidTC]

What we should do is require car companies calculate MPGs with tires inflated to the 'average' amount.

Then they'd all have an incentive to have consumers drive with tires at the correct amount, if every MPG they manage to up the average is one MPG less they have to make their car get.

They'd soon have sensors on every tire. And while I doubt they'd provide tires that can maintain their own pressure anytime soon, that sounds complicated, you'd start seeing cars with air pumps built in.

Support the brewing industry too

[QuantumFlux]

Gee, all that "waste" CO2 could go to carbonate all that wonderful German beer.

And while they're at it, the nitrogen removed from the air could be shipped to Ireland for use in Guinness!

Re:Support the brewing industry too

[grahamd0]

CO2 isn't added to beer as in ingredient, it's released by the yeast as byproduct of the fermentation process.

Ah a solution to our energy needs!

[tthomas48]

Thank goodness coal is a renewable resource! Oh wait...

While this is an ok stopgap, and we should make all of our current coal plants clean coal plants (after all if we can make them clean why would want to breath that crap), it doesn't solve the problem that with ever increasing energy needs we need renewable forms of energy or we're going to quickly run out.

Re:Ah a solution to our energy needs!

[Vagnaard]

I'm tired of reading that we are going to quickly run out. We are not going to quickly run out of form of energy. There will be less for everyone, then a lot of people will die, then it's gonna be ok for the survivors! /goes for his buggy and leather jacket. Mad max here I come!

Re:Ah a solution to our energy needs!

[geekoid]

No, we will not quickly run out of coal, we have a freaking lot.
We do need to stop burning it for health reasons.

Re:Ah a solution to our energy needs!

[tthomas48]

Sort of like we had a frickin' lot of oil at the beginning of this century?

Re:Ah a solution to our energy needs!

[afabbro]

Of course, our supply of solar energy is infinite...oh wait...

Re:Ah a solution to our energy needs!

[tuxontour]

You're right.
This is a stopgap solution especially useful for germany and some other european countries.
Germany has decided that nuclear fission is not their way to go. But unfortunately nuclear fusion will not be available for at least another 30 years. And germany will never be completely self-sustaining energy wise with renewable energy sources.
In addition to that germany has already pushed its possibilities of efficiently using energy and many other resources near the feasible maximum. To get further improvement you either have to make the peoples lifes miserable or introduce new technologies.

pumping co2 into the ground seems problematic

[circletimessquare]

i can imagine a number of various bad things this can lead to

why don't we just throw all of our efforts into fusion research?

use thorium and uranium fission until we get there?

seems like the most environmentally friendly, geopolitically sound thing to do

Re:pumping co2 into the ground seems problematic

[Anonymous Coward]

why don't we just throw all of our efforts into fusion research?

Because research only works that way in Civilization games.

Re:pumping co2 into the ground seems problematic

[Asic Eng]

why don't we just throw all of our efforts into fusion research?

The mythical man month? You can't solve every problem by adding more people to the project.

CO2 Sequestration worries me

[jep77]

Sequestering all this CO2 underground scares me to no end. Ever see what happens to a balloon filled with CO2? Drops to the ground like a brick. What happens when we fill all these natural gas voids with CO2? The Earth will get too heavy to stay in orbit and we'll drop to the very bottom of the universe! It's bad bad bad.

Re:CO2 Sequestration worries me

[Sique]

Luckily CO2 tends to react with Calcium, Sodium and Potassium minerals, and gives us different types of chalk. ;)

Re:CO2 Sequestration worries me

[SargentDU]

CO2 is already used in Natural Gas wells to pressurize and keep the well running longer than if you did not return an inert gas to the well under pressure. I know of a US coal gasification plant that pipes their by-product CO2 to Canadian Natural Gas wells today. It works very well.

Numbers

[pavon]

In case anyone else was wondering, industrial/commercial uses of C02 are on the order of 120 megatons per year, while CO2 emissions are about 13 gigatons (source). But if they can reclaim the CO2 using less energy/money that other sources, it wouldn't hurt to reuse it.

Insurance against the next ice age

[kanweg]

If we store it in empty natural gas fields, we can release when the next ice age hits us.

Bert

loss of efficiency

[confused one]

removing the nitrogen and capturing the carbon dioxide require energy input. This can't help the efficiency of the power generation plant, which means they have to burn that much more fuel per MWh. There has to be a better solution...

This is a bogus solution

[Anonymous Coward]

While this technology avoids injecting CO2 into the atmosphere, it is 'permanently' removing O2.

How can that be a good thing if carried out on industrial scales?

Underground?

[bluefoxlucid]

What the fuck? Dude, just pack it into metal tubes and use it for kegging.

Not as clean as one would think

[DaMattster]

This is an interesting proposition but still does nothing to address the periphery problems associated with a coal fired power plant. For one, coal has to be mined and that usually entails destruction of land to get at the resource. Secondly, it takes significant amounts of energy to mine the coal thereby reducing its return. Thirdly, lots of energy is spent on transportation of the coal to the power plant itself. Finally, more energy is expended in trucking off the waste CO2. So my question is: Is this really a clean solution? More money and research should be plugged into hydrogen as a fuel for power generation. Hydrogen is ubiquitous whereas coal is a diminishing resource. Why not continue efforts into nuclear fusion for power generation?

Re:Not as clean as one would think

[RobinH]

Hydrogen is not a power source, it's a power storage medium. The idea is you take electricity(solar, wind, wave, etc.) that you don't need at the moment (night time?) and use it to break water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen. You then store the hydrogen and burn it with oxygen when you actually need it.

There aren't huge masses of easily accessible raw hydrogen molecules sitting around all over the Earth like there is with coal.

Re:Not as clean as one would think

[bunratty]

Hydrogen is not an energy source. To get hydrogen gas, you need to supply energy to a chemical reaction that generates hydrogen gas. Hydrogen is therefore a means of energy transport, such as electricity.

As for fusion research, it has not stopped.

Is this really clean

[berashith]

Is this clean, or have they just moved the dirt to someone else's yard?

when all is said and done

[toby]

...It's a NON-RENEWABLE energy source. Just like OIL, folks. Don't they teach this stuff in school?

Re:when all is said and done

[bunratty]

That's why it's called clean coal instead of renewable coal.

Re:when all is said and done

[afabbro]

There is no such thing as renewable energy sources. They teach that in physics class.

There are some with a really big supply available...like solar power, wind, or for practical purposes, coal, but no renewable energy.

Re:when all is said and done

[camperdave]

Nuclear is just as non renewable as coal and oil.

Interesting idea.

[jd]

By removing the nitrogen, you obviously eliminate the formation of oxides of nitrogen in the combustion, which then eliminates the formation of nitric acid (one component of acid rain, sulphuric acid being another). Not sure it helps a vast amount if you're just going to store the waste gasses anyway. One idea I've pondered over (yes, Pinky, go play in the corner with the chainsaw) depends on extremely efficient nitrogen removal and I've never been sure how you'd achieve that. The combustion of nitrogen in a car engine uses more energy than it releases (endothermic reaction), so the more nitrogen you have, the less efficient your car is. I've looked at electrostatic methods - nitrogen holds onto electrons much more strongly than oxygen, so if you pass air over a charged grid, oxygen will be charged but nitrogen won't. You can then use a grid of the opposite charge to steer the charged oxygen at an angle into the engine, the nitrogen would however travel in a straight line. However, electrostatic methods are inefficient. You also need one hell of a charge to separate out the oxygen, if the car is traveling at any serious speed. On the other hand, a coal power station - even a thirty megawatt one - is going to demand a LOT of oxygen and at far greater volume. It also has to be extremely efficient if it is to not use more power than the generator generates. Yes, they don't have problems with weight limits (provided it's not made of neutron star matter) or space consumed (provided it doesn't interfere too much with air traffic), problems that obviously do apply to vehicles. However, provided their method can be scaled down enough and still meet the constraints a vehicle imposes, that might be a doable approach. The thing is, there are far more road vehicles than there are 30 megawatt coal power stations near CO2 stores, and oxides of nitrogen are a greater greenhouse problem and a greater health risk to humans than CO2 ever was. Besides, if vehicles could be made more efficient using some derivative of this idea, you'd reduce CO2 output indirectly anyway (by being far more fuel-efficient), whereas the generate-and-store method isn't guaranteed to help at all. (It takes a lot of energy to compress CO2 enough to be worth storing and there are enough major earthquakes away from any known fault-line or plate boundary to place any such deposit on land at high risk. You'd have to dump the CO2 into the oceanic trenches, which would acidify the oceans but at least carbonic acid gets converted to calcium carbonate in the long-term. Make things interesting for geologists in a million or so years, too, as opposed to lethal.) Another approach is to increase the availability of fresh water. "Huh?" you might say. Well, plants convert CO2 to O2 only when there is sufficient water to deal with the temperature conditions. If the temperature goes up and fresh water goes down, plants are net CO2 producers. Putting all the energy that would be used on filtering/compressing into H2O production might (note, only a might) assist plant-life sufficiently to remain net O2 producers rather than go into drought mode. So long as there is a net O2 production gain, even after fresh H2O production is taken into consideration, you win. As things stand, most of the CO2-to-O2 conversion is done in extremely hot climates which are becoming hot and dry climates. That's bad news. Net O2 production shuts down, we've more problems than a few greenhouse gasses.

Re:Interesting idea.

[Radio_active_cgb]

> depends on extremely efficient nitrogen removal and I've never been sure how you'd achieve that.

You don't remove the N2. Rather, you extract the H2O, CO2, and O2 for your burn cycle, and release the rest.

The gasses that condense out of air (from high temperature to low) are H2O, CO2, O2, N2. I don't think you have to worry about the other trace gasses that exist.

Mechanically, you compress raw air and move the resulting heat down the process. After separating out the various substances as liquids at various temperatures, you reheat the liquids back to gasses at their original temperatures (but this could be an optional step). Excess heat still remains - possibly, this can be used to preheat boiler feedwater or other purposes.

Sique (173459) writes> Luckily CO2 tends to react with Calcium, Sodium and Potassium minerals, and gives us different types of chalk. ;)

Heat from the initial O2 extraction may be needed/used to form such chalks.

At the end of the burn cycle, you have ashes, chalks and H2O. H2O can be reused or released. The rest of the waste products are solids - very easily sequestered or used.

This strikes me as being a very useful research project. Lots of good data will come out of this. Whether or not it can be scaled up remains to be seen.

Re:Interesting idea.

[Hatta]

You know, line breaks are a renewable resource that doesn't contribute to global warming. Use them.

Re:Interesting idea.

[jd]

But... but... carriage returns would require ponies and that Slashdot style isn't available right now.

Using the waste CO2

[Skapare]

Why not pipe (some of) the waste CO2 into a sealed greenhouse/biosphere system. Plants (the green biological kind) like that stuff and grow a lot faster when it is available in higher concentrations. Then pipe the oxygen they produce back to the coal burning power plant.

Re:Using the waste CO2

[bluefoxlucid]

No, CO2 does not help plants! CO2 only helps plants when we are doing greenefication of the highways to fight CO2. Do I have to send the thought police after you? You seem to have a form of lunacy that prevents you from properly applying double-think!

Re:Using the waste CO2

[bunratty]

CO2 does help the plants, but it takes hundreds of years for plants to use the excess CO2 in the atmosphere. It's just too slow of a process for dealing with excess CO2 levels. If it weren't so slow, we wouldn't be having the problem of CO2 accumulating in the atmosphere now.

Re:Using the waste CO2

[Skapare]

The idea isn't to get rid of all the CO2. You can't because, as you point out, it is too slow. But, it can be put to use. Very high concentrations of CO2 (e.g. over 5%, instead of the 0.0384% present now) can not only make the plants grow more vigorously, but also kill off the pests. You just can't walk into that area unless you are in an air isolation suit.

Terorrists

[bluefoxlucid]

Terrorists will wait 10 years, and then blow up the gas stores. It'll only take one good hole in the surface above the cavern. A second explosion inside will force the gas out into the atmosphere. Of course we could plant trees topside.

Re:Terorrists

[Eudial]

Terrorists will wait 10 years, and then blow up the gas stores. It'll only take one good hole in the surface above the cavern. A second explosion inside will force the gas out into the atmosphere.

Of course we could plant trees topside.

Uh, what terrorists would these be? I mean, the aim of any terrorist would be at most to topple the evil western empire, not wipe civilization as we know it off the planet.

Terrorists, unlike villains from spy shows from the '60s, have some sort of agenda, they don't sit around in their volcano lair plotting ways of destroying humanity whilst intermittently laughing manically for the sake of it.

Re:Terorrists

[bluefoxlucid]

If they destroy the whole world they get more virgins. I love virgins, so it seems only natural this would appear to a terrorist as well; however they are insane... but their primary motivation is virgins, so I think the analogy might cross the barrier.

Re:Terorrists

[Eudial]

There is however some level of auto moderation in this system, in that if a terrorist is bat fucking crazy enough to attempt to destroy the world, it is very likely their being bat fucking crazy will foil their plans.

It's like a reverse catch 22 or something of that nature.

Re:Terorrists

[Vegeta99]

Wait, so these virgins that they get have to DIE, they're not, you know... willed into being by Allah?

Well I hope they enjoy all the 80 year old women who died never having sex and all the stillborn infants...

Energy used to convert CO2 to C and O2

[wfstanle]

You are essentially correct! The catch is that the energy needed would be at the minimum equal to the amount of energy produced by the burning. Add to that the energy used in maintaining the process and you would actually consume more energy than the original burning of oil, gas or coal produced.

The nuclear option

[RudeIota]

One in important point is Nuclear is more expensive than coal in areas like the U.S where coal is abundant. In the capitalist-ish societies that many of us live in, low cost tends to garner more favor. It takes no stretch of imagination to guess that nuclear power scares people. I don't think things like carbon sequestering have the same 'certain doom' stigma attached to it in the minds of people who don't understand nuclear power (which is most people). Although, carbon sequestering itself could be very dangerous after a long period of time.

Anyway, nuclear power continues to be a "dirty word" even after the great lengths engineers have gone to in order to make reactors as safe as possible... People will continue to be scared until there is a 100% safe way to remove spent fuel from the planet. If given a choice between sequestering greenhouse gasses and nuclear fuel, I'd probably pick the gas too. The reason is - even though I understand it is absurdly improbable - if something huge happens like an impact or unexpected volcanic activity, I'll take my chances with the gas.

Using their extensive studies of the Yucca Mountain region, experts estimate the chance of a volcanic event disrupting the proposed repository to be about one in 63 million per year. This equals about 0.0000016 percent chance per year that a volcano will disrupt the repository. Put another way, it means there is about a 99.9999984 percent chance per year that a volcanic event will not disrupt the repository. http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0341.shtml

Nuclear / Fossil fuel prices:
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html

What's wrong with a million ton of CO2 underground

[blind biker]

Sooner or later it'll come out, and the later it does, the more people have forgotten about it and built or just come above the area. A million ton of CO2 can kill a million people, because it's heavier than air and it will linger around until it kills every human, animal and definitely a lot of plants.

CO2 eaters

[192939495969798999]

Can't we just fill that cavern with algae, bateria,etc and wait X years, and then mine the O2 back out?

Re:CO2 eaters

[bloobloo]

Okay, you find the appropriate organism and I'll nominate you for a Nobel prize.

Re:CO2 eaters

[Anonymous Coward]

Better yet, wait longer and it will turn back to oil and coal.

Re:CO2 eaters

[rrohbeck]

No problem, you'll just have to add huge underground lamps.

A reference...

[RudeIota]

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/608/

In the end, estimates are all we have to work with here. Estimates of oil production, estimates of gasoline savings. For our purposes in evaluating Obama's claim, all the available evidence shows that he's on solid ground in saying that better car and tire maintenance would save as much gasoline as drilling would generate. We appreciate McCain's campaign pointing out a GAO source we'd missed in our original research, but it's not at odds with our original ruling, True.

Underground Storage of Gas is Common!

[sampson7]

All these posts about farting planets are very amusing, but should be moderated "funny," not informative.

Companies in the United States currently have billions of cubic feet of natural gas and other gases into long-term underground storage facilities. In fact, anyone familiar with the working end of the natural gas business will be happy to spend hours explaining how it works. The Department of Energy -- http://www.eia.doe.gov/pub/oil_gas/natural_gas/analysis_publications/ngcapacity/ngcapacity.pdf has some info on the practice.

Put simply: gas underground moves very, very slowly. The diffusion rate can be measured, and while some gas will inevitably escape, the amount lost can be measured very precisely (and accurately).

Unless we as a society are willing to suffer blackouts, coal and other fossil fuel power plants will be around for years. Heck, even Al Gore says a minimum of 10 years, and I personally (as an energy industry guy) think it's going to be a lot longer than that.

If you accept that there is a man-made climate crisis coming, then storage of CO2 is an excellent short term fix to reducing emissions as we move away from a carbon-based economy. Whether you think of this as "short term" storage or "long-term" storage depends on your outlook. Is 100 years long or short? Seen from a geological timeline, it's laughably short. Looked at as a means of reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere starting today -- it's a great first step.

Re:Underground Storage of Gas is Common!

[Joey Vegetables]

My point is not to say that CO2 cannot be stored safely, only that it definitely can be stored unsafely, and that lives could be lost if this were to happen.

Of course, I'm not really sure why it makes sense to burn coal in the first place, even if it can be done cleanly, when we still depend on liquid fuels for the mid-term future. Why wouldn't we crack the coal instead using nuclear or hydroelectric energy? Sure, there would be some net energy loss, but it would reduce our dependence on petroleum (imported or otherwise) and hopefully buy us some time to figure out how to do transportation on an un-densely-populated continent this large without making such extensive use of fossil fuels.

Being an energy industry guy, can you tell me if is there some reason I'm missing why this wouldn't work, aside from the obvious but hopefully short-term problem that we refuse to build the necessary nuclear plants?

Re:Underground Storage of Gas is Common!

[Lost Race]

Anything under fifty years is short term; anything under a million years is medium term. In the long term only solar energy is sustainable. Of course in the very long term all the stars will be gone and we'll need an alternative. We have about a trillion years to work on that problem.

Re:Underground Storage of Gas is Common!

[WindBourne]

false; geothermal; wave; etc.

Re:Underground Storage of Gas is Common!

[cthulu_mt]

Wave power? In 50 billion years we'll have spun off the Moon and then where we will get tidal wave power.

Think more long term.

Re:Underground Storage of Gas is Common!

[afabbro]

In fact, anyone familiar with the working end of the natural gas business will be happy to spend hours explaining how it works.

That would be fun to put to a test. "Good morning, it's Saturday and I'd like you to spend the next eight hours telling me how natural gas storage works. Huh!? But I was told you'd be happy to do so..."

Re:Underground Storage of Gas is Common!

[afabbro]

We have about a trillion years to work on that problem.

Well, if it all goes Big Crunch perhaps we can harness the power of the collapsing universe to keep the lights on.

Re:Underground Storage of Gas is Common!

[WindBourne]

If we survive another 100 years, I will be impressed. As Eisenstein said, not sure what weapon will be in WWIII, but WWIV will be sticks and stones.

Re:Underground Storage of Gas is Common!

[Anonymous Coward]

There is one major difference between natural gas and CO2 though: density. If something shifts underground and natural gas starts escaping, it streams upward and it fails to build up to flammable or suffocating percentages, even in a valley. If CO2 starts leaking in your valley, it's going to stay there. That's why we have the horror stories about CO2-burping lakes, but not about natural gas happening to pool up to the right percentage in a valley and ignite when the next stray spark appears. Also, natural gas has to "find" a natural fissure in order to escape. If we're pumping CO2 down, we've already made the escape hole, and our seals won't be as good as miles of rock that have yet to crack.

Re:Underground Storage of Gas is Common!

[Anonymous Coward]

As an "energy industry guy" you would know we're not going to rely on one form of power plant for fuel creation. We'll go away from coal as we know it today, thankfully. However, it'll be filtering out of the exhaust into it's proper components and dispersing it properly.
There's no blackouts that will occur because as an energy company there will be smart people who will measure the amount of energy needing to be added to the grid at any given timeframe and will make up for it accordingly. (much like we do today when we shut down a nuclear plant temporarily)

I agree though, there are lots of "omg, the planets like so going to blow gas out ahah". At the very least we can shut down CO2 creating companies that put it into tanks and sell it, and just pump it into those tanks LOL

But with all seriousness, it'd be very nice if we reached a creation method without the dumping of gases. An odd concept, but hey... what can I say I guess I'm a liberal.
That was sarcasm, for those who were nodding their head.

Re:Underground Storage of Gas is Common!

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be new here...

Let me give you a hand...

1. You know that thought experiment about the million monkeys and the million typewriters? It's not a _thought_ experiment here.
2. No one reads the articles - no one.
3. No one is qualified to comment on the articles ("woot!" and "first post" excepted).
4. People who _seem_ qualified to comment are actually bots trying to sell viagara or cialis.
5. People who state that they are qualified are really all unemployed Jai-Alai trainers.

Everyone who read this story actually heard, "Blah, blah, blah, coal, blah, blah, blah, CO2, blah, blah, coal." and thought - I should protest that.

But...

[roc97007]

...What will the trees breathe?

Peeve: C[zero]2

[Lost Race]

There are several reasons why someone might write C02 instead of CO2, and why an "editor" might approve such text verbatim for publication, but they're all dumb.

(Now I bet some dweeb flames me for not subscripting the "2".)

why not real greenhouses?

[Phurge]

apologies for my lack of specialist knowledge.. but why not take the CO2 and inject it into real geenhouses? You know.... to grow some crops....

Biochemistry 101: A brief discourse

[john.r.strohm]

Reaction 1: 6 CO2 + 6 H2O + energy (sunlight) ----------> C6H12O6 + 6 O2

(Note: Reaction 1 is catalyzed by chlorophyll, and there is a lot of other stuff going on.)

Reaction 2: C6H12O6 + 6 O2 --> 6 CO2 + 6 H2O + energy

What it means is that plants take in water and CO2 and make sugar (carbohydrates) and oxygen from it, while sugar (and other things) can be burned in oxygen, making carbon dioxide, water, and releasing some of the energy that went to make the sugar.

(Note: You can run reaction 2 with hydrocarbons (CmHn) instead of carbohydrates. You have to supply more oxygen per hydrocarbon molecule, to oxidize the hydrogen. At the same time, oxidizing the hydrogen also releases energy.)

This is called the "carbon cycle". It used to be taught in elementary school science class, and then again in more detail in high school biology and chemistry classes.

"Global warming" is Mother Nature's way of extending the growing cycle, allowing reaction 1 to convert more carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen.

The above oversimplifies the processes involved, but does at least hint at explaining why burying carbon dioxide in the landfill is idiotic: you are burying valuable food and breathable oxygen.

Re:Biochemistry 101: A brief discourse

[DrFalkyn]

We have more than enough carbon and oxygen to sustain our population. Remember it was us who dug up all that carbon in the first place and converted into CO2

Re:steps - off topic

[Anonymous Coward]

i use dsl to download xyz
(about 25 minutes per episode) Who needs to wait?

Germany's Giant Coal Excavators

[Anonymous Coward]

Germany has built several giant coal excavators ... one bucketwheel excavator swallowed a bulldozer: http://sprinklerdoc.com/dozer.html

For decades, the German economy depended on coal (and lignite) mined by these behemoths. Like the Peabody Coal company, they left behind a devastated landscape - see http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=50.96013,6.6579505&z=18&t=h&hl=en

Brown Coal

[lobiusmoop]

It's all very well capturing the CO2 generated when burning lignite, but since it is the poorest form of coal with the lowest energy density, much more of it needs to be burned than with traditional anthracite (black) coal and so a lot more of the other air pollutants and ash are going to be generated as well, which seems like a bigger worry to me.

Maybe it's funny, maybe it's not

[Overzeetop]

Seriously, there are lots of uses for carbon dioxide, and soft drink carbonation is just one use. Others have pointed out paintball, but there's lots of commercial need for CO2 in both gas and solid form. Most efficient manufacturers have found resale opportunities for their "waste," why not bottling the CO2?

Sure there may not be quite as much CO2 demand as there is generation, but we also don't need to get all our energy from coal. Finding a symbiotic manufacturer is a damned good idea.

Um

[Anonymous Coward]

Clearcutting? What you say is mostly correct til the clearcutting part. Once you clear cut you disturb the previous Carbon equilibrium which makes clearcutting a loss for carbon sequestration. Not to mention the erosion, animal devestation, and other problems.

Forests aint the key to this problem- Algae is.
Huge tanks of it...when it dies we convert it into fuel/plastics while it lives we feed it CO2.

Re:Um

[inviolet]

Clearcutting? What you say is mostly correct til the clearcutting part. Once you clear cut you disturb the previous Carbon equilibrium which makes clearcutting a loss for carbon sequestration. Not to mention the erosion, animal devestation, and other problems.

The fastest-growing (i.e. fastest carbon-sequestering) species of tree are not shade-tolerant. That is why production forests, by which I mean forests that are geared to sequester carbon into wood quickly, must be planted on clearcut fields.

Whenever someone squawks about clearcutting, you may infer that they know nothing at all about forestry.

Liquid CO2 huh?

[Taibhsear]

CO2 is only gas or solid at normal atmospheric conditions. It only has a liquid state at over 5 times normal atmospheric pressure. So not only is it cold, but under pressure too. So you have to keep it cold and pressurized and hope nothing ruptures under ground.

Someone mentioned burying it in the Sahara. Which honestly I think might be a decent idea. Research has shown deserts capture a vast amount of CO2. If we buried it there, and it leaked, there'd be little to no populace around to suffocate and the desert itself might actually contain a good portion of it.

Incorrect, it's based on 1/4 autos light1/3 trucks

[geekoid]

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07246r.pdf

That letter gives a lot of information, and you can follow up on their references.

You will run out of Oxygen

[mathmathrevolution]

What is the problem with putting the putting the emissions back in the ground?

"The Problem" with putting emissions back into the ground is that it isn't sustainable. If we are combusting carbon fuels with atmospheric oxygen, then eventually we're going to run out of Oxygen. Earth's oxygen will be trapped somewhere "in the ground".

Re:You will run out of Oxygen

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazingly, there's these things called "plants" that can convert sunlight+CO2+water into oxygen. Have you heard of them?

Re:You will run out of Oxygen

[mathmathrevolution]

Dear Retard: Plants can only decompose atmospheric carbon dioxide, not C02 that has been trapped and injected "into the ground", which is neither atmospheric nor does it even remain C02. That's why they call it "trapped".

Re:You will run out of Oxygen

[oatworm]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the reason we're talking about putting CO2 underground is because we have too much CO2 in the air to begin with. In other words, there's still plenty of oxygen to free up.

That said, if we ever start to run low, we can either release some of that sequestered CO2 or create a giant ship that turns into a metal maid-shaped being that can suck all of the oxygen off of some other planet. Y'know, whatever is cheaper or keeps the lobbyists employed.

Re:You will run out of Oxygen

[mathmathrevolution]

Trapped CO2 that is pumped into the ground reacts with minerals and eventually is incorporated in stable ground solids. It would be very difficult to get the oxygen back out. It's true that it would take a long time for us to use up our atmosphere. Sequestered CO2 might be a good short-term solution, but if we were to follow the recommendations in the coal industry's "clean coal" ad campaign, then we would be looking at easily burning up 0.5% of our total atmosphere in the next 100 years.

Re:You will run out of Oxygen

[DavidTC]

Dude, you're insane. We cannot run out of oxygen. The entire surface of the planet is composed of silicon dioxide.

Re:You will run out of Oxygen

[mathmathrevolution]

we'll just breathe that I guess.

Re:You will run out of Oxygen

[LordVader717]

If we were ever in a state that we wouldn't have any oxygen to breathe, we'd have died much earlier from, uh, not having anything to eat.
Plants produce food and oxygen. If we didn't have any oxygen, we wouldn't be producing food either.

And apart from these far-fetched ideas, have you noticed that atmouspheric CO2 levels are give in parts per million, wheras oxygen makes up 20%?

And what of the "in" side?

[RyoShin]

So perhaps they have a solution to the "out" part of coal plants. I won't argue if it's good or bad, I don't know enough about storing pressurized C02 underground to know what it could or could not do.

But it's my understanding that digging for coal is still a dangerous task that has a lot of its own perils, including environmental problems.

So where's the solution for that?

Right, because government corps. work so well

[unassimilatible]

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have done so well lately, let's nationalize utilities now. Because government is more efficient than the private sector.

Just what I want, the government, free of any profit or competition concerns that a private company would have, either telling me my energy bill is going up because of some monstrously expensive CO2-curbing technology, or better yet, rationing energy a la Cuba. I guess I'll have to use those mod points later, since there's a brownout right n

Re:Right, because government corps. work so well

[RyoShin]

My understanding is that both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been acting as independent, for-profit companies, which created part of the problem we have now.

I recall the power problems California had not existing until after the power companies were privatized, too.

Regardless, I believe that any utility or service that is basically required by the general populace and that uses public or government property should be maintained by the government and basic service offered to the public, while private companies can use these utilities to add extra services. This includes electricity, telephone, gas, and perhaps internet.

That should be CO2, not C02.

[Angostura]

pedant that I am.

You forget, this is Germany...

[gillbates]

A brewery would be more appropriate.

Re:You forget, this is Germany...

[rrohbeck]

A brewery doesn't consume CO2 - the yeast produces it.
At least in Germany. Dunno about the US - maybe American beer is more like beer flavored soda. :P

Possibilities

[DigitalReverend]

Photsynthesis is out of the question being underground, but I wonder if there isn't some type of biological that can process the CO2 in such a way as to release O2 and leave behind Carbon thus making a "non-renewable" energy source somewhat renewable.

Net loss with nonfossil fuel?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not burn charcoal/wood in one of these? Then we would get a net loss of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Just a wild idea...

[rickb928]

Without reading any other posts, there are commercial uses for CO2. How about finding a way to sell this CO2 to legitimate commercial users, thereby avoiding actually extracting it from wherever it is being extracted now, and all the energy use in doing so. Two uses I can think of are for soft drinks and dry ice...

Now, of course, this will displace those other current providers of CO2, but hey, one of the benefits of green technology is destroying industries that seem to be dirty, so this is a good thing, no?

And send some over here. We drink soda too. And want stuff really cold.

Not a big deal

[DarthVain]

As someone who works in the industry somewhat, Canada and I am sure others have been storing Natural gas and Oil underground in VAST quantities.

To my knowlege two types of facilities exist. Old coral deposits and and old salt mines.

Basically deep under ground there are large petrified coral reefs from days of yor. These areas are HIGHLY porous. Yet surrounded by non-porous rock. So while its not really a big cavern you can inject whatever gas you like down there and plug it, and it will stay down there a long time. Did I mention these are big places that hold alot?

The other type are old salt mines that have been mine using solution mining. Which is basically injecting water, pumping the saline out, and then letting it evaporate. These produce large underground caverns. Suitable for storing all sorts of stuff including oil. You want the oil out, inject water, oil being lighter comes out the top... simple. Works for coral as well I think, but not sure.

In any case not sure if the geology is the same over there as it is here, but provided they aren't using them and they have some around why not?

The only concern I would have is what sort of process would be going on down there when the CO2 changes from liquid to gas again, and what sort of pressure you are atlking about. It will not stay at -20 for very long I am thinking so some sort of chemical change may take place while trying to inject it. Which may be dangerous.

Emmission through the ground as mentioned is probably not a big deal, its a known quantity. It also isn't explosive or flammable which is nice. Though you could suffocate someone if the blow was big enough.

Thing is depending on the amount of waste CO2, these facilities, while huge, are none the less finite. They WILL eventually fill up, and then what, unless there is a use for CO2. Also while using them for CO2 storage, you wouldn't be able to use them for gas or oil etc.... Now if you can figure out a good use for massive amounts of concentrated CO2 that won't bugger the environment, you might make some money!

Problem

[PPH]

Pump all that pressurized CO2 underground and, one of these days, the earth is going to fart.

Re:Problem

[Ukab the Great]

Either that or we'll have natural springs that spew seltzer water.

Great editing as usual

[Anonymous Coward]

Witness the one sentence in this item which is not part of a verbatim quote:

"MIT's Technology Review is reporting that the world's first coal-driven power plant designed to capture and store C02 emissions."

Reporting that this power plant... what, exactly? Has it been planned? Has it begun operation? Has it sprouted a pair of wings and flown off to Mars?

1 million years in the future...

[ZarathustraDK]

Protoss 1: "Nope, not vespene here either"

Protoss 2: "By Adun! WTF is wrong with this planet!"

Re:In this house Lisa,

[Anonymous Coward]

Geological? Try alchemical. Carbon doesn't transmute to other elements to form new non-carbon minerals. Mineralize carbon and you get slate, coal, or diamond.

Better to have a living process rebind that carbon with hydrogen into useful biochemicals and free up the oxygen for later recombustion.

we obey to the laws of chemistry.

1. Put carbon deep in to the ground.
2. Let the heat do the conversion of carbon dioxide and water in to the carbonic acid.
3. The results are carbonate salts, harmless minerals.

That's not the only problem with coal, though...

[Lapsed_Pacifist_2876]

Like other posters have mentioned, this process would have to be scaled up a bit to be useful for generating energy. What about the environmental impact of mining the coal in the first place? There are a few areas in Western Canada that look just awful from the coal strip mining that used to take place there.

Use the CO2?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they sell (some of) it to greenhouses to raise the level of CO2 in the (sealed) greenhouse and increase the rate of plant growth?

Any problem with this?

Carbon != C02

[mathmathrevolution]

When plants die they leave behind carbon, not trapped C02.

Re:Carbon != C02

[DavidTC]

And then they rot, or get eaten in other ways, and the carbon gets turned into CO2.

Re:Carbon != C02

[mathmathrevolution]

Some decaying plant matter will turn into atmospheric CO2, none of it will turn into trapped CO2.

Where goes our oxygen?

[chuck]

So, CO2 sequestration seems to be the new fad idea, but explain me this, please:

We dig up hydrocarbons (hydrogen + carbon) from the earth. We burn them using oxygen from the air, producing water (hydrogen + oxygen) and CO2 (carbon + oxygen).

Then we bury the CO2 (containing the oxygen that was taken out of the atmosphere) in the earth for millions of years.

Is that sustainable? We, like, need oxygen, right?

How do they remove the nitrogen?

[Michael Woodhams]

This sounds like a very difficult task to do efficiently and in large quantities.

I did find a couple of articles in Wikipedia, but they are very brief. The vacuum swing adsorption sounds like it could be what they use.

If the argon in the air goes through the furnace, once the CO2 is liquified, the remaining gas would be very argon rich - would this be of commercial value? (Perhaps there is already more argon-rich gas coming from the cyrogenic gas industry than we know what to do with.)

No really, he's right. You are lame.

[Anonymous Coward]

You've lumped the whole world that disagrees with you into one straw man, and then you defend that position.

Now you'll have to post one more time to get the last word.

Go ahead. I know that's important to you.

How about feeding the CO2 to Algae?

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems an wasteful way to deal with the CO2. Chill, store and transport the liquid CO2 cost $$ and energy.

Why not feed the CO2 to Algae, and it would grow like crazy (in the presence of sunlight, obviously). That we can turn the carbon in CO2 back into biodiesel.

Pump it

[SlashDev]

Now I know where all those underground fumes come from in New Yok city.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Dihydrogen Monoxide

[Anonymous Coward]

If we really want to get serious about getting green house gases under control we need to get rid of the worst one. Dihydrogen Monoxide is responsible for nearly all the greenhouse gas warming in the planet. Not only does Dihydrogen Monoxide have the highest concentration in the atmosphere of all greenhouse gases, it is also pretty effective at absorbtion (although not as effective as methane).

We of course will seriously have no worries left at all if we eliminate all Dihydrogen Monoxide from our planet, right? ;^)

LCPCC

[failedlogic]

Make the pollution disappear a science geek way with a Large Carbon Portal Creating Collider. Accelerate the carbon emissions to 99.9999% of the speed of light. With the giant Black Hole Portal that is created, the LCPCC will make the pollution go somewhere that is not on Earth (so not our problem). To the people at CERN: Forget the LDHC, the LCPCC sounds cooler and has a lot more potential for solving problems on Earth. And for the SETI people, if the Black Hole Portal sends out crap to some other planet, you can be sure we will find extraterrestrials in short order. They might be a tad pissed off though.

What's The Energy Budget?

[cmholm]

Reaction 1: 6 CO2 + 6 H2O + energy (sunlight) ----------> C6H12O6 + 6 O2

As you're probably aware, work is ongoing to turn photosynthesis into an energy-efficient industrial process, in part to generate the various organic byproduct feedstocks we currently get from petroleum. So, that's good.

The issue I was hoping TFA would address in at least a passing fashion is what the energy budget is for the German demonstration project. In particular, how much of the generated energy is needed for N2 extraction and CO2 compression and liquefying?

If this works, great. However, I'm hoping "we" don't lose sight of the goal, to not have to run through much of a power generation carbon cycle at all.

So?

[Goonie]

Corn is a renewable resource. Trying to use it as an energy source has been an environmental and social calamity and has produced bugger-all energy. It may be renewable, but it's not in any way environmentally sustainable.

There is a metric buttload of coal out there. The problem is that it causes massive environmental damage when you mine it, and potentially civilization-destroying environmental damage when you burn it - the part that this sequestration plant mostly prevents. It's obviously not renewable; if the technology in this plant pans out it becomes relatively sustainable, at least for the next century or so.

Nuclear energy (and I know this is very far from a universally accepted view), by contrast, is clearly not renewable, but it causes comparatively little environmental damage to mine the raw materials, bugger-all damage in operation, and the quantities of waste are such that it can be safely disposed of without causing environmental harm. Additionally, for all practical purposes the quantities of fuel available - particularly if you count thorium - are infinite. So, in my view, nuclear energy may not be renewable, but it's completely sustainable for millennia, or we invent something better.