Future vision: A rendering of the proposed FutureGen clean-coal plant that is planned for Mattoon, IL. The commercial-scale plant will demonstrate carbon capture and sequestration as a way to control carbon dioxide emissions.
FutureGen Alliance
The DOE's backing revives a pioneering clean-coal project.
Fifteen months after the FutureGen Alliance's ambitious project to build America's first commercial-scale clean-coal plant was shelved by the Bush administration, the plan has been given new life thanks to a $1.073 billion conditional commitment from the Department of Energy, which will be dipping into stimulus money allocated for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) research.
Supporters of the project welcomed the news this month as a chance for the United States, which currently gets half of its electricity from coal-fired power plants, to reassert itself as a global leader in clean-coal technology. The reborn FutureGen will look much like the original concept when it was first announced in 2003. It will be a 275-megawatt Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plant designed to gasify coal, creating synthesis gas composed of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The syngas will be reacted with steam in a process that converts the carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide and produces more hydrogen. The carbon dioxide will be captured and pumped into a saline aquifer thousands of meters underground. The hydrogen will be combusted to generate electricity.
The original FutureGen was promoted as a way to demonstrate "advanced coal-based technologies" and "produce hydrogen to power fuel cells for transportation and other energy needs," according to a 2005 press release announcing the creation of the alliance. But in a recent energy-department press release announcing the government's renewed support for FutureGen, the words "coal" and "hydrogen" are never used, and instead, the emphasis is on demonstrating "carbon capture and storage at commercial scale."
Use of the term "clean coal" has drawn too much attention to the source of the power, rather than to the outcome after power generation, some industry observers say. Meanwhile, U.S. secretary of energy Steven Chu announced in May that he was slashing the agency's hydrogen-research budget and steering development away from transportation.
"If you go back to those earlier years, you'll see so much in the way of hydrogen this, hydrogen that. But when was the last time people talked about hydrogen?" asks John Mead, director of Southern Illinois University's Coal Research Center. Mead believes that the fading interest in the so-called hydrogen economy is part of the reason that the Bush administration backed away from the original FutureGen. "The project was propelled by that earlier interest in hydrogen, which was not directly related to the primary and best use of FutureGen," Mead says.
The new plant will be based in Mattoon, IL, which in December 2007 won a competition to host the facility. That was just a month before the Bush administration pulled out of the project, citing rising costs and a preference--never acted on--to spread the wealth among several CCS-based coal projects. At the time, critics of the government's about-face warned that a less centralized funding strategy would dilute efforts at creating a commercial-scale demonstration of advanced technologies.
Despite subsidies and new projects, carbon dioxide sequestration is still a long way off.
The United States and China are both focusing on technologies to clean up coal power.
There is some irony in the fact that many people deem nuclear waste a serious risk. First the quantities are tiny in comparison the energy equivalent CO2 and second they are mostly heavy elements that aren't going to get very far even if containment fails.
The idea that you indefinitely sequester a volatile like CO2 seems far more risky.
...I still think it doesn't compare to next generation nuclear power.
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coffeetime
3 Comments
A better way?
Just wondering - what if coal-fired plants were located close to forest land. From what I've read, a single mature tree can absorb 48 lbs. of carbon dioxide each year and release enough oxygen into the air to sustain 2 humans. Just divert the CO2 output of the generation plant towards the forest, and let nature take care of the rest.
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Monsterboy
92 Comments
Re: A better way?
It's a nice thought, but I don't think it's going to matter where the plant is located. The trees are going to pull the same carbon out of the atmosphere regardless, and no nearby forest is going to use it at the rate it's being put out.
Now, if the genetics folks could get us some superfast-growing trees, that might help. In fact, just an hour or so ago I was thinking about how algae farms might do at capturing carbon if they were to build some specifically to thrive in CO2-rich environments. Fertilizer-rich runoff could be diverted to them, so they'd act as water-scrubbers at the same time.
Still probably way too slow, of course, on any scale that wasn't itself environmentally destructive. On the other hand, anything taken out and left out would be a help, especially if emissions come down to reasonable levels.
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erbium
338 Comments
Re: A better way already thought of?
Bubbling CO2 emissions thru algae tanks to capture has already been thought of. This might become reality as the algae can be turned into hydrocarbons, gas or diesel.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20090629/bs_afp/usclimateenergyethanoldow
and this link shows the obvious:
http://gas2.org/2009/03/26/algae-biofuels-world-summit-wraps-up-in-san-francisco/
there is hype about algae, 15,000 gal/acre is hype, 2,000 might be more realistic, still much more than biomass or corn.
co-location, i.e. near end users such as chem plants, and near co2 output is likely key, and original use may be to output other than fuel.. The result would still be substantial reduction in fuel use if that occurs.
Likely to take additional energy, possibly from growing the algae in clear glass bubbling tubes so sunlight can be used, hence sunny climate likely best.
While this recycles the carbon into fuel, the resulting fuel, if burned outside a carbon capture environment would simply delay slightly the release of carbon from fossil fuels into CO2 in the atmosphere.
If the algae hydrocarbons were instead turned into materials such as plastic lumber like they make out of recycled plastic now, or carbon fibers for building materials, concrete reinforcement, instead of fuel then we wouldn't affect the climate.
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MakeSense
99 Comments
Re: A better way already thought of?
I look at CO2 that is used to grow an algae replacement for diesel fuel as an offset of carbon produced by petroleum, not coal. So, it is not in my opinion a form of carbon sequestration. What it would be is a way to produce hydrocarbons domestically that would otherwise be imported and to do so in a nearly carbon-neutral way.
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