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Scientists Develop Technology That Burns Natural Gas With No CO2 Emissions (scienceblog.com)
New submitter Ben Sullivan writes: Researchers and engineers in Vienna have developed a way to burn natural gas without releasing CO2 into the air through a combustion method called chemical looping combustion (CLC). In this process, CO2 can be isolated during combustion without having to use any additional energy, which means it can then go on to be stored. The method had already been applied successfully in a test environment, and has now been upscaled to allow use in up to a 10 MW facility. ScienceBlog.com reports: "A granulate made of metal oxide circulates between the two chambers and is responsible for transporting oxygen from air to fuel: 'We pump air through one chamber, where the particles take up oxygen. They then move on to the second chamber, which has natural gas flowing through it. Here is where the oxygen is released, and then where flameless combustion takes place, producing CO2 and water vapor,' explains Stefan Penthor from the Institute of Chemical Engineering at TU Wien. The separation into two chambers means there are two separate flue gas streams to deal with too: air with a reduced concentration of oxygen is discharged from one chamber, water vapor and CO2 from the other. The water vapor can be separated quite easily, leaving almost pure CO2, which can be stored or used in other technical applications."
"The water vapor can be separated quite easily, leaving almost pure CO2, which can be stored or used in other technical applications."
Hmmmm, quite a lot of CO2. Probably more than needed for "other technical applications" - besides which, what will be done with it after those "applications" are complete?
Anyone need 10 Gigatonnes of CO2? How many big tanks would it take to store? Or will it be cleverly stored underground, somewhere we can be absolutely sure it will never suddenly re-emerge into the atmosphere?
I am sure that there are many other solipsists out there.
A better title would have been :
Scientists Develop Technology to Recapture CO2 Produced by Burning Natural Gas.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
A better version would have been: "Scientists Develop Technology That Allows To Easily Separate CO2 Emissions When Burning Natural Gas", by paying special attention at words like almost in their "the water vapor can be separated quite easily, leaving almost pure CO2" description.
They aren't even removing the CO2, but storing it somewhere else. So, this approach delivers something similar to what the existing CO2-capture techniques already do.
Clarification: I am not particularly interested in participating in discussions about this orrelated issues. The main motivation for this post is to somehow complement my previous ones in another article.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
From the article:
"“The large-scale underground storage of CO2 in former natural gas reservoirs could be very significant in the future,” believes Stefan Penthor. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also sees underground CO2 storage as an essential component of any future climate policy. However, CO2 can only be stored if it has been separated as pure as possible – just as it is with the new CLC combustion method."
In other words: They have found a combustion process that produces one stream of almost pure CO2. So it's not removing any CO2, but splitting it.
bickerdyke
You know, you're right, I wrote a bullshit, greenhouse gas is the culprit here... Too bad you cannot delete a comment!
Look at it this way - If you grow plants to absorb all the CO2 a power plant produces, you would be growing enough plant matter to run the plant on the biomas. That's going to be a lot of farms under plastic.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp
leaving almost pure CO2, which can be stored
And guess how much energy you need to "store" the CO2.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Another fun statistic: nearly 2% of climate scientists agree with you!
Milankovitch cycles, you dumb fuck. Among other things.
Ok, so theres O2 in the air - we use it for respiration
We each personally emit C02.
The C02 then gets recycled back into oxygen by plants and trees.
If you take the C02 out of the equation then over time there is less available oxygen for everyone/everything..
Seems like an idea that hasnt been thought all the way through..
We are pulling the gas and oil out of the ground. Formerly, it was not available for use by plants or trees. We burn the gas and oil, and now all of that stored carbon is available for use by plants or trees. This is a change to the equilibrium, and so our world is changing in somewhat unpredictable and rapid ways that will be traumatic to people and ecosystems.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Should we write it on the same side as "Where's George?" or on the opposing side?
Production is still a dirty process. Methane leaks into air and ground for one thing. Drillinguses millions of gallons if water. Chemicals used in ectraction get dumped into underground wells with probable additional contamination.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
Algal ponds also need a cheap source of CO2 to sparge. I don't know what fraction of it is taken up and what is lost but given the algae are hungy for it perhaps it is a lot.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
To put (very rough) numbers on the difference mentioned by AC - the CO2 released from burning fossil fuels to produce 1W of heat will capture an average of around 1,000,000W of solar energy before it leaves the atmosphere. Get rid of the CO2, and global warming goes away.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Burning natural gas cleanly creates water vapor and CO2. If you simply run the exhaust through a still, the water vapor will condense down to liquid water and the gas will be almost pure CO2. I'm not sure what their fancy combustion method actually brings to the table.
Do you have ESP?
I don't know why these global warming idiots just don't do their own research before opening their mouths.
Did you ever think that maybe we did?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
to boost plant metabolism. Saves them on burning natural gas or propane to generate it
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
The system has more than us and plants in it. It also has burning massive amounts of formerly-sequestered carbon (AKA coal, oil and natural gas).
That extra CO2 input means we already upset the balance you speak of, in that we're putting out lots more CO2 than plants can absorb. So there is zero danger of exhausting the oxygen supply by slightly reducing that lots. We'll still be putting out more CO2 than plants can absorb.
The main problems are that all our methods for creating the raw input, natural gas, involve vast amounts of leakage of this greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, and it's fairly destructive. Then the method quoted does not show high enough efficiency to be cost effective.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Perhaps as a source for a dry ice (aka solid CO2) plant?
Here's a fun experiment to show you why your argument is dumb:
1) Find a brick wall.
2) Slowly walk into it.
3) Now try running into it headlong.
You see how #2 was fine while #3 gave you brain damage? Yeah that's pretty much the same difference between historic carbon highs and today. Historically, it took hundreds of thousands of years to switch between carbon highs and carbon lows (and similar for temperatures, though carbon isn't the only factor there so the two aren't always 100% in sync.)
This time, instead of hundreds of thousands of years we're doing it in hundreds of years. That would be the equivalent of, instead of running at the wall for #3 you strap yourself to a rocket and fire yourself at the wall. You're well beyond brain damage and into the realm of vaporization at that point. That's basically what we're doing to our planet. But with carbon instead of bricks.
There's a lot more O2 than CO2 in the air. We'll run out of fossil fuels before we run out of O2.
I guess the headline sounds better with "no CO2 emissions" so they used that rather than the more correct headline "pure CO2 emissions"? Since it is incredibly easy to remove water vapor from exhaust, this seems like a Rube Goldberg solution to that problem. Sounds like they put of lot work into something and rather than admitting the approach did not pan out, they are pitching their failure as an over-the-top success.
My solar panels and wind turbines generate virtually NO CO2!
Y'all are welcome to use solar and/or wind, too!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
My point isn't that we should grow biomass to run the power plant. Farming plants to power a power station is ridiculously impractical.
But it is exactly what you are trying to do - in reverse - if you capture the CO_2_ and feed it to plants, with the intent of consuming all the CO_2_ the power plant produces. You are trying to use plants to un-burn the fuel you used to run the power plant - and the scale is the same as trying to grow the fuel.
Prediction for end of Universe #42: Fencepost error in Quantum_bogosort.cpp