Mixing Coal and Solar To Produce Cheaper Energy

Al writes "It might not please many environmentalists, but a major energy company is adding solar-thermal power to a coal plant and says this could be the cost-effective way to produce energy while lowering CO2 emissions. Abengoa Solar and Xcel Energy, Colorado's largest electrical utility, have begun modifying the coal plant, which is based near Grand Junction, Colorado. Under the design, parabolic troughs will be used to preheat water that will be fed into the coal plant's boilers, where coal is burned to turn the water into steam. Cost savings comes from using existing turbines and generators and from operating at higher efficiencies, since the turbines and generators in solar-thermal plants are normally optimized to run at the lower temperatures generated by parabolic mirrors."

Comments

who would object?

[eighthave]

sounds good to me, donno any environmentalists who would object to burning less coal...

Re:who would object?

[Anonymous Coward]

your answer: its better then coal on its own but might be used as an excuse to avoid making solar/renewable a larger part of an energy plain, such as "we are green, we have coal solar power stations" rather then actually building any wind farms/etc

Re:who would object?

[Rei]

Coal doesn't have to be produced by MTR. One can both object to MTR and support reducing the coal consumption of our existing plants. It's not economically realistic to phase out all of our existing coal plants, but if we can eliminate 4/5ths of their coal consumption, that'd be a huge victory.

Re:who would object?

[ciroknight]

A rabid unshaven hippie environmentalist might bring notice to the fact that this is just spending more money propping up coal, rather than investing the money directly into pure green energy (such as a pure solar thermal power plant replacing the coal burning one). But the fact is, there's no way this money would have went to pure green energy in the first place, so they should really be pleased that they are even bothering to try to green their coal plants at all.

Re:who would object?

[QuasiEvil]

Within the US, MTR mining is almost entirely an eastern thing, and for the most part, eastern coal has nastily higher sulfur levels than western coal.

Almost everything out west is either underground mines (as is true for the mine that feeds the Cameo plant in the article) or strip mines out in the middle of flat boring nowhere Wyoming. Compared with the destruction caused by MTR mining, neither of these is particularly objectionable.

Re:who would object?

[commodore64_love]

WELL AS I SAID (but you apparently didn't bother to read): "this is one step towards that goal". You can not get to the second floor of your house in one leap - you have to take one step at a time. Today 50% solar/50% coal. Next decade 75% solar/25% coal. The decade after that 95% solar/5% coal power plants. Same applies to cars which are 10% electric/90% gasoline hybrids today, but eventually will be 95% electric with maybe a small gasoline generator for long-distance. But I guess shouldn't expect an environmentalist to understand that simple "transitional" principle. They are too busy pushing-over radio towers and then bragging about it - http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/04/washington.towers.terrorism/ I tried to make a reasonable statement, but all I got was a slap across the face. You will not win your cause by pissing-off other environmentalists who are on your side.

I drive an 80mpg hybrid, light my house with 25 watt or lower bulbs, and turn-off the heat in the winter to help reduce my carbon footprint - and then some shitheads named the "Earth Liberation Front" go do this. These earth-worshiping religious wackos harm the cause; they don't help it. I'd like to set fire to every one of their offices, and see how they enjoy having millions of dollars of personal property destroyed.

And if they really believe the AM radio waves are interfering with cellphones (impossible) or intercoms (probably but they are second-class devices anyway), then petition the FCC. That's why that organization exists.

Re:who would object?

[c6gunner]

Howso? I linked to an article that notes quite clearly that GM marketed and sold all-electric cars from 1996 to 1999.

Marketed .... ok, depending on your definition. Sold ... definitely not, as the article you linked to clearly explains:

On December 5, 1996, GM began delivering the EV1s to its selection of carefully-screened lessees ... Although the car could not be purchased outright, its MSRP was quoted at $34,000.

The economics of the EV-1 are hotly contested

In the same way that evolution is hotly contested - ignorant people make straw-men arguments and conspiracy-theories persistently raise their ugly heads, while people who actually know what they're talking about shake their heads in amazement.

Again, from the article:

According to Dennis Minano, then-GM Vice President for Energy and Environment, "Is it what our customer wants?"[11] GM was not alone in its denunciation of electric vehicles as a viable alternative to the gasoline car; according to Robert J. Eaton, then-chairman of Chrysler, "The question is whether the market is ready for the product... if the law is there, we'll meet it... at this point of time, nobody can forecast that we can make [an electric car].

None of the automakers expected to create a viable electric vehicle by the set deadline, but they had no choice other than to try. If the EV1 had not been scrapped, it's possible that it may have found a niche-market, kinda like the Segway. Whether such a low level of sales would have been enough to justify development costs is debatable. Either way, it's clear that EV's weren't ready for mainstream use in the 90's - they didn't have the range, they cost too much, and they took much too long to recharge.

Hell, Tesla Motors is having problems making pure electric vehicles TODAY for mainstream use, and they have the advantage of better technology in general, and much better battery technology in particular. I like the idea of buying their sedan once it becomes available, but I'm not a big fan of forking over $50,000 for it. And their financial figures reflect the difficulty of the project - if the government hadn't bailed them out with $400 million, it's likely that the company would have folded.

Pre-heating good. Coal, not so much

[dfetter]

It turns out that you can turn CO2 into fuel by exposing it to a titanium oxide catalyst in the presence of sunlight. In a closed cycle, this would be a carbon-neutral way to go. http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/03/23/carbon-dioxide-fuel.html

Why would it not please environmentalists?

[Rei]

Why wouldn't environmentalists be happy with this? I consider myself one and think this is great news. Too many people focus on 100% solutions. You don't need to eliminate 100% of coal in the short term. Reducing coal consumption by 80% or so by having solar provide heat during peak hours (daytime) would still be a huge benefit.

Re:Glad to see the "coalar" tag

[Kagura]

I'm investing in a solar mine in Africa. If it all pans out I'll be rolling in more solar than I know what to do with. The only kinks left are how to transport all the solar I'm expecting to mine.

Re:Pre-heating good. Coal, not so much

[piemonkey]

It turns out that you can turn CO2 into fuel by exposing it to a titanium oxide catalyst in the presence of sunlight.

That's just another form of solar power, it's just you're using the sunlight to produce fuel rather than electricity. If it's more efficient than solar electrical generation (very possible) then it's a good idea, it's bound to be more efficient than biofuels, but whether it's more efficient than solar water heating, I don't know.

You'd probably need a concentrated source of CO2 for that, so it would either reduce efficiency, by using some energy to concentrate CO2, or would use existing power plants outputs, meaning it's not carbon neutral.

Everyone should read this http://www.withouthotair.com/

Re:Environmentalists

[amorsen]

According to the article we're talking at best 15% less coal burned per unit electricity, with no way to scale beyond that. Great for the power plants where it is viable, but definitely niche. Doesn't change the fact that we should stop building coal fired plants and decommission the existing ones.

Re:Why Would Environmentalists Not Be Pleased?

[Nadaka]

Don't forget nuclear. Be a fan of nuclear power if you want to be green. We need to start building new feeder/breeder reactors. They can use the waste of the previous generation of plants as fuel with a much reduced waste footprint. Combine that with the small area and resistance to adverse climate and it makes a good compliment for other "green" energy.

Wind IMO is not that great for large scale deployment, to unreliable. Though it would be quite acceptable over time for tasks that don't require constant power, such as water purification or hydrogen electrolysis.

Displeased Environmentalists

[Doc Ruby]

If it displeases environmentalists, it will be because it's still really bad for the environment. Using solar to preheat the water instead of more coal to preheat it just admits that solar is a more effective tech for generating energy than coal is. Any coal still burned is still polluting the Greenhouse, creating huge and unmanageable costs just a little down the road (and downwind, the typical "coal is clean" illusion).

They should just convert the entire plant to solar. But coal is too subsidized for them to abandon it, and its lobbyists have too tight a chokehold on the government for solar to have an equal shot at economic efficiency.

still not clean

[beckett]

There have been many attempts of late to greenwash coal, this solar project and the "clean coal" concepts being the most recent incarnation. Even if 100% of coal plants can be made 100% carbon neutral, where do they get the coal from?

in December 2008, a 40 acre ash pond in tennessee broke through its walls and flooded millions of gallons of coal ash, potentially far worse than the Exxon Valdez. This is one of the largest environmental disasters that has happened in the US, and there has been little to no national coverage about this accident.

There are a lot of heavy hitters in the coal industry that want to put the best possible face on coal (e.g. Montana), and it is alarming that 'mountaintop removal', the laziest way to get coal, is frequently not discussed when considering how green a coal plant can be.