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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
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.
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.