Carbon Capture and Storage, Now With 40% More Acid Rain!
by Matthew McDermott, New York, NY on 08.14.08
photo by Ian Thorpe
Although often portrayed as the savior which will allow us to continue exploiting our relatively abundant coal reserves without increasing global warming until something comes along to win the day, a new study to be published in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control gives us another reason to believe that carbon sequestration isn’t quite yet ready for prime time. Science News fills us in:
Capturing Carbon Does Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Though a coal power plant equipped to sequester carbon requires about 30% more coal to provide the power to compress the captured CO2 and pump it underground, the overall carbon emissions still are reduced by 71-78% compared with an average coal plant for every usable unit of electricity produced. That’s the good news.
But Increases Ones Which Cause Acid Rain
The bad news is that if you take the entire lifecycle of a CO2-burying plant—the “cradle to grave” pollution which takes into account the extra energy required mine additional coal and bring it to the power plant—emissions of nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxides were 40% greater than a modern coal plant not set up to capture carbon. In addition to causing acid rain, these chemicals are linked with increased water pollution and destruction of the ozone layer.
The report notes that if the mining, transportation and support services around carbon capture were made greener the “pollution penalty” for sequestration could be reduced.
Greener mining? It may be a necessary evil to some degree, but I’m pretty sure green mining is an oxymoron. Solve one problem, increase another.
via :: Science News and :: Yale Environment 360
Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS)
Important! Why Carbon Sequestration Won’t Save Us
Scientists Develop Low-Cost Version of Carbon Capture and Storage
The Carbon Sequestration Cost Everyone Else Forgot
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It should be noted the USA is catching up with Europe on low sulfur diesel, hence the new TDI Jetta for sale in California.
That just leaves oxides of nitrogen, I am hoping someone somewhere is working on a capture method to deal with this?
I'd have guessed that a process that sequesters CO2 would also catch SO2 and nitrogen oxides. Guess not. They will have to be regulated too. Can't overlook mercury either. DB
Why is there a picture of cooling towers emitting steam in an article about CO2? Color me confused.
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Author responds: for the umpteenth time, yes it's steam coming out of that coal power plant, but it's far more illustrative of the problem of emissions that running a photo of colorless gasses, don't you think?
You want to know about NOx and So2 capture look at Thermalenergy.com
The original study cited in the article cited here had to do with postcombustion CO2 capture on a pulverized coal plant.
Integrated gasification combined cycle plants offer both more efficient use of coal and proven, utility-scale, (comparatively) economic precombustion carbon capture. Generally speaking-- though not in every case-- when power generation businesses analyze carbon capture they assume IGCC technology, precisely because postcombustion capture is untested, inefficient, and expensive.
Why not give the full background, outlining or at least mentioning the different control technologies, instead of simply dismissing carbon capture? Why summarize a summary, instead of going back to the original source, which by the way was easily obtainable?
Probably for the same reason TH continues to post pictures of cooling towers to illustrate discussions of pollutants: because oversimplified and misleading is more fun. (How is steam "far more illustrative of the problem of emissions"? As Booyah pointed out, it doesn't illustrate that at all. Are you assuming your audience won't know that?)
Author responds: for the umpteenth time, yes it's steam coming out of that coal power plant, but it's far more illustrative of the problem of emissions that running a photo of colorless gasses, don't you think?
No.
There are ways to capture NOx and SOx emissions, but they add to already questionably high price of the power generated. Water pollution from mining is a real biggie too. These problems might be solved with add-on technology, but how much are you willing to pay? The free market doesn't work if people refuse to consider the options.
"Author responds: for the umpteenth time, yes it's steam coming out of that coal power plant, but it's far more illustrative of the problem of emissions that running a photo of colorless gasses, don't you think?"
Author FAIL.
No it isn't illustrative...it's steam. Go find a picture of a coal plant with brown smoke being released...that's the bad stuff. Your just tayloring to people's stupidity (something that has to be done, if we are to continue on with all these green discussions)
But but but water vapour is a GHG. :-)
It's all nonsense anyway, now an enviro-political scam. Cooler oceans are reducing their co2 emissions and increasing co2 take-up. Temperature has declined since 2000, last year, dramatically. Reputable scientists including BritMet predict a continued cool down, they say ~10 years, the PDO and quiet Sun say longer, maybe more than 30 years depending on the inertia instilled by the amount of cooling.
On behalf of biomass everywhere, please stop the co2 nonsense.
Other *real* pollutants, fair dinkum.