Capture this: A carbon capture and sequestration facility operated by American Electric Power and Alstom at the Mountaineer Power Plant in New Haven, WV.
Alstom
Despite subsidies and new projects, carbon dioxide sequestration is still a long way off.
On October 1, a coal-fired plant in West Virginia operated by American Electric Power (AEP) became the first power station in the U.S. to pump a portion of its carbon dioxide emissions underground. At the same time, the U.S. Department of Energy is funneling billions of stimulus dollars into carbon capture and sequestration. And FutureGen, a government-backed project to build the first zero-emissions coal-fueled plant, looks set to rise from the ashes.
At first blush, it seems carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is on its way to making clean coal a reality. However, no commercial-scale CCS operation is near completion in the U.S., and until a market price is set on carbon dioxide, experts say things aren't likely to change.
"Until there is a market, the technology won't take off," says Howard Herzog, principal research engineer with the MIT Energy Initiative. "It's amazing that there are as many projects going on that there are today; they are all research and development projects that are funded with subsidies."
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided $3.4 billion in federal funding for CCS projects, including $1 billion for FutureGen and more than $1 billion for other commercial-scale operations. Yet even with this money, significant hurdles remain.
"There are an array of technical challenges that have to be overcome," says Tom Williams, a spokesperson for utility company Duke Energy, which recently invested $17 million in carbon-capture research at a coal gasification power plant in Edwardsport, IN, and is currently seeking federal funding to further develop capture and sequestration technology at the plant. "Permitting challenges, sequestration challenges, geological challenges, [and] efficiency challenges all have to be figured out," Williams says.
One of the geological challenges faced by Duke Energy and others investigating in CCS is ensuring that the pressure inside reservoirs deep beneath the surface of the earth doesn't climb too high as carbon dioxide is injected. "There are only certain safe levels that you can raise the pressure to before you get into issues of seismicity," Herzog says.
Ernest Majer, a seismologist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, briefed members of the U.S. Senate in September on these potential hazards. He says that pumping pressurized, liquid carbon dioxide underground has the potential to cause minor earthquakes, although with proper site selection and injection rates, this shouldn't be an issue. "If you inject great volumes into an active fault, then yes, you are going to have problems, but we've been injecting wastewater from municipalities for years without a problem," he says. "You just have to engineer it properly."
In particular, this means implementing reliable monitoring systems to track the movement of carbon dioxide deep underground. Sensors used in oil and gas fields are well developed for this purpose, though less-expensive monitoring systems would make carbon dioxide sequestration for coal plants more cost-competitive.
The end of an ambitious carbon-capture project shows that it's hard to economically justify the technology in the absence of a carbon policy.
Gasifying coal underground could slash the cost of carbon capture--but don't hold your breath for it to happen.
A draft version of a Senate bill that would limit greenhouse gas emissions is unveiled today.
Least we forget, the issue is separation and capture of the CO2. Sequestration below ground is more of a PR problem than a technical issue. Capture is $100 per ton, pipeline and geological sequestration is $10. The R&D needs to follow the money requirements.
why is that the issue? anthropogenic global warming is a myth. what is the urgency to sequester/control/whatever?
Rather than pump massive amounts of CO2 into the ground, how about not creating so much in the first place? An emerging hybrid-nuclear technology can burn coal with massively reduced greenhouse gas emissions. See www.hybridpwr.com
The figures of $100 per ton for capture and $10 per ton for distribution and sequestration are meaningless. They have no connection to the real world. They are simply made up numbers to make a very complex and expensive process seem simple to deal with.
Is the operation using fuel that yields high or low quantities of carbon dioxide? Is the fuel energy dense lowering the proportionate cost of the scrubbing process? If it is an existing plant what is the cost of conversion to CO2 scrubbing? If it is a new plant what is the extra cost for the added processes? How far is the existing plant from a suitable sequestration site? What are the transportation costs for that particular plant to that particular burial site? If the new plant is located to be convenient for sequestration how far must it then be removed from the fuel source? What are the drilling conditions for the burial site? What is the cost of reservoir remediation and maintenance? What is the capacity of the reservoir? Does the site capacity limit the lifetime of the energy plant or preclude long term increase in output?
Carbon dioxide (CO2) is stable and therefore very expensive to remove from emissions. CO2 is relatively bulky and therefore very expensive to transport. CO2 is toxic to humans when concentrated so burial sites must be such that they can never permit a discharge for thousands of years.
carbon dioxide is not particularly toxic to humans, we receive shipments daily of coolers filled with CO2 ice to keep the contents chill.
Sequestration doesn't need to be 'sealed for 1000 years'. If MOST of it stays in the ground it is effective even if small leaks occur.
However we should rethink the whole idea of sequestering. Why are we sending what could be a valuable commodity back into the ground. It's likely we will be mining landfills for resources in a few years so same might happen with the CO2 that we could sequester.
Instead, separate the C from the O2 and release the O2 or sell or use in industrial processes. The carbon can be used to create plastics, carbon fibers for everything from bicycles, airplanes, cars, building girders, stronger and lighter than steel and concrete strengthening fibers.
There are many other industrial processes where they previous threw out the byproducts and are now using them in secondary processes.
For those who think a carbon tax is akin to socialism, the act of polluting or spewing co2 endlessly at the rate of 1% of the natural total yearly is socialism, polluting the 'unowned commons' of the sky. If I came to your house, parked 20 busses around it and ran them day and night I think you'd agree that there is real damage done by this pollution. As society we agreed to let this happen by default at the much lower levels as cars and industrial plants spewed but it is now out of control. We simply need to tell them not to spew out the CO2.
Nukes are not the answer either:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/12/seven_myths_about_alternative_energy?page=0,3
CO2 is not toxic. it can be deadly, but that is in circumstances where it displaces O2 in the lungs and therefore stops breathing. it has little or no chemical toxicity.
What if you took the C02 emissons and passed it through a closed system such as a CO2 --> Algae --> biofuel sequence as currently being tested by Joule Biotechnology. I have seen their closed system where the CO2 emission is injected directly into a closed algal-growth system. The algae excrete a bio-fuel, and this bio-fuel is captured, processed and burned as fuel source for the primary CO2 emitter. There is an algal periodic growth cycle, but this can be managed through an algal crop rotation system. This to me, is a means to recycle the CO2 (keep it molecular-bound), reduce the operating costs of the plant, and not have to worry about some futuristic off-gas event.
What is unknown is the mmBTU of the algae bio-fuel versus the mmBTU coal-burn which produced the CO2. What I am getting at here is, what is the photo-kinetic contribution effect et al, for the mmBTU of the algae bio-fuel? We know the amount of coal burned (mmBTU) to produce x-tons of CO2. Now what is the resulting mmBTU of the bio-fuel with the same amount of bound CO2? The result should surprise you...favorably.
I think posters of some recent entries
in this thread have uncommon sense that
should be common. Some seem to think doing
nothing is better than the carbon cap &
trade + sequester scheme. Some have ideas
on how to make captured carbon useful.
I gather that global warming via anthrop-
ogenic CO2 is real, with disasterous eff-
ects and what humanity has caused on such
a scale unintentionally may be mitigated
or reversed with sufficient, organized
resolve intentionally, according to scien-
tific consensus and environmental activ-
ists. I see no reason to doubt them, but
the cap-trade-sequester strategy is
flawed on it's face.
Environmentalism that works also prospers.
Not just a minority, profiting from dis-
posing of waste with everyone else pay-
ing them! Solutions to our waste should
prosper everyone as well as saving us
from it. We must convert carbon from an
exhorbitant liability into a great asset
to the world economy. In that vein, i
think the main way to do that is turn
it into diamond.
Readers here will probably all be aware
flawless, synthetic diamonds of a few
carats in weight have been mass-manufa-
ctured for several years and many new
technologies are being born from that
development ($5/ a carat, in 2005).
A logical extension of that is success-
ive scaling-up of diamond synthesis, un-
til practically any size and shape can
be even more cheaply mass-manufactured.
After that, most machines, buildings
and roads will be made of diamond.
It's properties for most purposes are
superior to metals, cement and asphalt.
It is also very chemically inert. It
will not seep back into air and sea.
More new technologies will be born
with giant diamond synthesis. With
massive diamonds and other ultrahard
crystals, there are additional ways
to cure global warming and turn toxic
wastes and landfill materials into
pure elements for re-use.
mwl@windstream.net
Coal+CCS has even worse long-term storage risks than nuclear. It is the ultimate expression of stealing from the future and must be stopped.
It is only interesting to the guys who have all the coal.
Un-mined coal is the best form of carbon sequestration you can get.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
Our list of the 50 most innovative companies, including the following:
On Twitter
Become a Fan on Facebook
Subscribe to the Feed
StupidPeasant
98 Comments
carbon hole
Why spend money on this when we have nuclear and solar? The owners of all that coal must be very powerful.
This is a big waste of time from a very corrupt and stupid government. Cap and trade= tax and steal.
Reply
enantiomer2000
66 Comments
Re: carbon hole
dont worry. nobody will be using coal in 10 years. in 20 years just about nobody will be using hydrocarbons for energy at all. it will probably continue to be used for things like fertilizers. The middle east will once again be an economic desert.
Reply
StupidPeasant
98 Comments
Re: carbon hole
Good
Reply