Carbon Capture And Sequestration (CCS) Update: Capture Methods Highlighted By USDOE Grant
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 08. 4.08
You may recall that Federal funding for the single, multi-billion dollar, "CCS" pilot project slated for the US State of Illinois was recently canceled by the USDOE. Thus ended the high profile consortium project with a design integrating coal gasification with carbon dioxide capture and sequestration - in single demonstration. Coincidentally, big CCS projects planned in other parts of the world also were stalled or canceled in early 2008. The combined effect was to send a signal that the sequestration card could become unplayable as a coal defense. What smaller projects would the USDOE decide to fund?
With the high tech, integrated projects temporarily sidelined, everyone was left to wonder which cost-effective technologies would emerge for existing (non-gasification) coal-fired electricity generation facilities.
Specifically, everyone has been waiting to find out which C02 stack emission capture technologies are cost effective, and how the evaluations would be made. Here's how.
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced today that it will provide $36 million for 15 projects aimed at furthering the development of new and cost-effective technologies for the capture of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the existing fleet of coal-fired power plants.Those of you with engineering, chemistry, and material science backgrounds will find the project list fascinating. Via: USDOE, DOE to Provide $36 Million to Advance Carbon Dioxide Capture
Most of the listed pilot projects have a 2 to 3 year duration range. New process technologies typically take 5 or more years before commercial-scale economics, reliability, and operability are fully demonstrated. Assuming that several cost-effective stack-capture technologies sort out by 2011, full scale field tests can then be initiated.
Conclusion: commercial feasibility of the 'capture part' of CCS may not be publicly known until prior to the the 2012 US election. Given the importance of coal in the climate action equation, some sort of fast-tracking may be necessary by the next US administration.
Image credit::Solar Navigator, Coal rail cars in Ashtabula, Ohio
More TreeHugger coverage of CCS developments
Scientists Develop Low-Cost Version of Carbon Capture and Storage ...
FutureGen's Plan to Bring CCS to Illinois in Trouble?
The Carbon Sequestration Cost Everyone Else Forgot
Could a Century's Worth of Carbon Emissions Be Stored Within the ...
EU To Pump Up Hot Air Capture
Vattenfall Promises More Carbon Capture At German Coal Plants ...
Plug-in Hybrids a Better Use of Coal = -25% Greenhouse Gas ...
It's No Gas: Norway's Karstø Cuts Back Before It Even Gets CO2 ...
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While I certainly hope these CCS projects are successful, and the idea of clean coal turns out not to be an oxymoron, I am still doubtful. Some of the proposals seems sound, but I think the best effect we can hope for from CCS is a dawning realization that making coal clean will also make it cease to be the cheapest available energy source. At the very least, I'm willing to bet that wind (even with necessary grid improvements and as-yet unknown energy storage capabilities) and nuclear end up cheaper than coal+CCS. Solar, too, most likely.
Still, once we succeed at switching to carbon-free energy sources, we're gonna need CCS technologies to deal with the even larger amounts of much lower concentration man-made CO2 already in the atmosphere.
Well, since the price of new nuclear has climbed into the stratosphere, it might be better to put your hopes into wind (already competitive) and solar (getting there rapidly).
Nuclear is a dead man walking....
Well, since the price of new nuclear has climbed into the stratosphere, it might be better to put your hopes into wind (already competitive) and solar (getting there rapidly).
Nuclear is a dead man walking....
The best way to store carbon is as coal in the ground.
The idea of liberating coal, which is pretty much solid carbon, extracting the energy by burning it, then separating the CO2 and shoving it somewhere ranks in feasibility down with practical space elevators and terraforming of mars. It may be something we can pretend is possible, and on small scale I am sure it can be demonstrated, but I don't think that many believe that this is just a way of pretending that we can continue to burn coal and not have an impact on the balance of CO2 in the atmosphere.
For god's sake, we can't even eliminate heavy metals emissions from coal plants. All of the lakes and rivers in the midwest are now contaminated with mercury from coal plants and there is a lot lower technical hurdle to eliminate metals emissions than that of capturing and storing all of the CO2.