Norbert Schaefer/CORBIS
Rethinking partial capture of carbon dioxide
Researchers seeking to make coal a more environmentally friendly fuel have long believed that requiring new coal-burning power plants to capture all their carbon dioxide emissions is the cheapest way to keep the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere. But full-capture requirements may prove counterproductive in the short term because they create such big hurdles for power producers: although no state yet requires full capture, the costs of complying with such a policy would be prohibitive. "No one is really able to [achieve full capture] right now because of the technological and economic risks associated with it," says Ashleigh Hildebrand, a graduate student in chemical engineering and the Technology and Policy Program at MIT.
Working with Howard J. Herzog, principal research engineer with the MIT Energy Initiative, Hildebrand created a model to study what would happen if, as an intermediate step, power producers adopted technologies that could capture just some of their carbon dioxide emissions. "We started thinking about the idea of backing off on the capture requirements, and thinking, What does it mean if you achieve different levels of capture--if you achieve 10 percent versus 50 percent versus 90 percent?" Hildebrand says. The model revealed that partial capture may be more worthwhile than previously thought. "By reducing the capture requirement, we're essentially reducing the cost and the risk associated with it," says Hildebrand. As a result, power producers may be able to implement partial carbon dioxide capture more quickly than they could full capture; widespread voluntary adoption of full-capture policies is anticipated to take 10 to 15 years. "If we can get partial capture implemented sooner in more plants, we can actually generate more knowledge from it, which will act to expedite large-scale deployment of full capture," says Hildebrand. "And that's the long-term goal."
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JasonBourne
3 Comments
CO2 Capture
Now that funding for the Atmospheric Sciences has reached 2 billion dollars annually (spurred on mostly by the fear of climate change), it must be difficult to create atmospheric models sans the assumption that Global Warming is occurring to ensure that researchers can capture more government funding.
I’ve heard too much from Hollywood, the media, and Al Gore that changes in the CO2 concentration in our atmosphere is the cause of Global Warming. Unfortunately, our government leaders are not scientists and are, more often than not, willing to distract us from the real issues at hand by suggesting there is more doom elsewhere. This, in turn, further feeds the media to no good end.
CO2 levels never made any sense as the engine driving climate change. CO2 makes up about .038% of our Earth’s atmosphere and man’s contribution is something on the order of 3%. So, man’s contribution to the increase in the concentration of CO2 is 0.001%.
CO2 is not toxic, it is not an effective GHG, and it is necessary to support plant life on this planet. The thermal time constant of Earth’s oceans, which store CO2, is in the hundreds of years which support the data which show that changes in CO2 levels lag changes in atmospheric temperature by several hundred years. Al Gore’s time scale is so large when he tries to show a correlation between CO2 levels and atmospheric temperature that this lag is difficult, if not impossible, to see.
Furthermore, most atmospheric models don’t explain the data. It’s bad science to change the data to fit a model.
Other, more reputable scientists have come up with better theories on climate change which actually fit the data. Their research can be found everywhere without much effort.
Before anyone charges off on some grandiose engineering project to reduce or eliminate net CO2 emissions at great expense of taxpayer dollars, more time should be spent on understanding the correct reason(s) for climate change especially by those who still believe CO2 is the culprit and that anything could be done about it anyway.
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JasonBourne
3 Comments
Re: CO2 Capture
By the way, the picture shown above with the white stuff spewing everywhere from the nuclear power plants is water vapor, a very effective greenhouse gas. What do we propose to do about that?
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