Scientists Develop Low-Cost Version of Carbon Capture and Storage
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 05.17.08
Image courtesy of melancholic optimist via flickr
Carbon capture and storage (see here and here for a primer) has always been a tough proposition: Scientists and environmentalists worry about the potential leakage from storage sites and its additional fuel requirements, while energy utilities complain about the excessive costs and risks associated with the technology. A new technology developed by scientists at the University of Wyoming, Laramie, could help ease its adoption by significantly reducing the cost factor.
Currently, companies typically pass their carbon dioxide emissions through a solution containing monoethanolamine (MEA) to bind the gas. The process of heating the saturated MEA solution, which is necessary to release CO2 and restore the material, incurs huge costs; it is believed to drive the cost of recovering CO2 to around $47 a ton.
Maciej Radosz and his colleagues at UW decided to use activated carbon and other carbon-rich materials -- much cheaper alternatives -- to adsorb the CO2. While previous studies had suggested that high pressure conditions were needed for the carbon-rich materials to work effectively, Radosz intuited that separation could also occur under low pressure/temperature conditions -- a gamble that paid off when he put it into practice.
The researchers are now working on scaling up the process and on making the carbon materials more selective; if successful, they believe it could drop the cost of CCS to $20 a ton, or less than half current prices. Yet doing so could prove tricky: As we've mentioned before, scaling up such technologies can often reveal hidden costs, environmental and other.
Via ::ScienceNOW: Catching a Climate Offender (news website)
See also: ::EU To Pump Up Hot Air Capture, ::It's No Gas: Norway's Karstø Cuts Back Before It Even Gets CO2 Capture
And, of course, dont forget about the need to capture SOx, NOx, mercury, etc as the plants need to burn more coal and would otherwise emit more of these pollutants just to run the sequestration process.
You're right to be cautious. As it stands, the coal industry is trying to use CCS as a "get out of jail free" card.
We've got solutions that are already market tested and successfully deployed (efficiency, solar, wind, etc.). Let's put our money into those. End subsidies (direct and indirect) for the coal industry.
We recently published a report about CCS - laying out the case against it. Full report and short summary are here...
www.greenpeace.org/ccs
I believe materials called zeolites, inorganic materials will also adsorb CO2 and will release it when heated. Vacumn distillation reduces the temperature needed to gasiify any adsorbed material.
Sorry, but this is not good enough. We need to move away from burning coal for electricity. Even with capture and storage technology it doesn't justify the damage done the the planet digging it out in the first place.
Our county needs to seriously step up its recycling efforts and look into more projects like plasma-arc gasification.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-09-09-fla-county-trash_x.htm
Would it be possible to bind the carbon to something in such a way that it could be burned?
Is it possible there is some such chemical reaction that could produce fuel from the carbon in the air that would use less energy than the amount of fuel obtained?
For example hoe about pumping the carbon into a photo bioreactor growing algae for bio diesel?