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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. "
really, how much CO2 is generated in removing the nitrogen from the air used to combust the lignite ?
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
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
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!
Good people go to bed earlier.
What is the final cost of the generated electricity?
In $/KW-Hr?
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.
Plain old sigh.
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!
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.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
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.)
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Why not put a Coca-Cola bottling plant next door. :~)
[Insert pithy quote here]
"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.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
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.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
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.
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.
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.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
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.)
-- Alastair
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.
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.
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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.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/09/11/ap5412821.html
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.
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.
"I bless every day that I continue to live, for every day is pure profit."
"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".
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.