Carbon Capture and Storage

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Feb 2009

Carbon Capture And Storage (CCS) is an approach to mitigating the contribution of fossil fuel emissions to global warming, based on capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) from coal burning power plants. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage and http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf83.html

President Obama’s Energy Policy includes investment in low emissions coal plants using carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) technology.
http://www.barackobama.com/pdf/factsheet_energy_speech_080308.pdf

The Political Debate. Environmentalists are coming together in Washington DC in March 2009 to stage what they hope to be a huge protest – a day of civil disobedience. They say clean coal is a sham. This good news/bad news story underscores the dilemma faced by the coal industry and a society hoping to change its energy habits. According to government data, since 1963 when the US passed its first Clean Air Act, utilities have gradually cut coal pollutants by more than 70% as measured by the regulated hazardous emissions. Particulates – soot – are down 90% even as coal use has tripled. Coal does have enormous virtues - it’s cheap and abundant. That’s why we have become so reliant on it. While petroleum is the world’s primary energy source, accounting for about 37% of consumption, coal is second at more than 25% and its share is growing because it’s abundant in more than 70 countries. So coal will be with us well into the 22nd century, and probably far beyond. The terms of the controversy are being defined in the US, the world’s second biggest producer and leading coal consumer.

The consequences of coal mining and burning have been evident for more than a century, yet country after country has made a cost/benefit analysis that the damage caused by coal is worth paying because of the economic benefits it yields. At least until recent years, we as a society have made a collective judgment that dirty but cheap energy is worth the costs. The Obama administration has made it clear that is going to change. A cap-and-trade system, a carbon tax, or a combination of the two is inevitable. That would set a cost for greenhouse gas emissions, which would create a financial incentive for coal (and oil) companies to fund CCS or retrofit power plants to use natural gas which emits almost 30 percent less carbon dioxide than oil, and just under 45 percent less carbon dioxide than coal - http://www.naturalgas.org/environment/naturalgas.asp

The greens’ goal is admirable. Who would not want a world humming along on windmills and solar panels? But is it feasible? Here’s where their argument goes fuzzy. The unspoken green myth is that the world can make an orderly and relatively rapid transition from a fossil fuel present to a green energy future. But there are huge technical and economic hurdles. The current relatively low cost of energy allows the U.S. to make a profit on its goods. Raising that cost would raise the cost of literally everything. Currently only a small number of CCS power plants have opened and others are on the drawing boards, but costs are high. More daunting, is storing massive amounts of carbon dioxide safely for many centuries.
http://www.ethicalcorp.com/content.asp?ContentID=6380

Worldwide progress is making CCS cost effective, progress that cannot be ignored in the March 2009 Washington debates.

U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Flagship Project. FutureGen is a DOE project announced by President George W. Bush in 2003; its initial plan involved the construction of a near zero-emissions coal-fueled power plant to produce hydrogen and electricity while using membrane technology and carbon capture and storage. Despite cancellation of funding by DOE, the FutureGen Alliance continues to move forward with a project in Mattoon, Texas (August 2008) making a concerted effort with the Obama administration to reinstate the project and get the power plant built as originally planned. The $1.3 billion FutureGen coal-based power plant is designed to be a nearly emission-free. Using coal gasification a water-shift reactor will produce hydrogen and carbon dioxide. The CO2 will then be separated by membrane technology and sequestered geologically. The hydrogen will then be used to generate electricity in a 275 MW generating plant and also in fuel cells.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FutureGen#cite_note-33

U.S. - CCS Partnership in the Appalachian Basin
February 11, 2009 - A U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) team of regional partners has begun injecting carbon dioxide (CO2) into coal seams in the Central Appalachian Basin to determine the feasibility of CO2 storage in unmineable coal seams and the potential for enhanced coalbed methane recovery. The results of the study will be vital in assessing the potential of carbon storage in coal seams as a safe and permanent method to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions while enhancing production of natural gas. The DOE's Southeast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (SECARB) began injecting CO2 at the test site in Russell County, Va., in mid Jan 2009. About 1,000 tons of CO2 will be injected over a 45-day period. The site was selected because it is representative of the Central Appalachian Basin, an area of about 10,000 square miles located in southern West Virginia and southwestern Virginia. This area has been assessed by researchers to have the capacity to store 1.3 billion tons of CO2 in the coal seams while increasing natural gas production up to 2.5 trillion cubic feet. Injecting CO2 into coal seams boosts coalbed methane recovery, which provides an immediate commercial benefit and offsets infrastructure development costs, while providing long-term storage of CO2 in the formation—a win-win situation. The project is being coordinated by the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research under the direction of Dr. Michael Karmis, a professor in the Department of Mining and Minerals Engineering at Virginia Tech. http://www.powermag.com/POWERnews/1726.html

Utah Posed to Begin Power Production.
Feb 24, 2009 - http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,705287105,00.html
Utah is poised to become home to clean carbon energy as a new joint venture aims to put carbon dioxide emissions away for good. Headwaters Inc., a Utah-based natural resources company, announced a collaboration with the University of Utah’s civil and environmental engineering professor Brian McPherson, using carbon capture and sequestration technology, to store more than 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide in underground storage space large enough for 50 years' worth of current Utah-generated emissions.

Colorado to Use Ionic Liquid Technology – February 18, 2009 – http://ion-engineering.com/2009/02/20/ion-engineering-unveils-new-technology-to-capture-and-control-greenhouse-emissions/
ION Engineering is a new company that is the first to successfully integrate ionic liquid solutions into carbon capture and emissions control technology. Using new solutions based around ionic liquid technology, ION has developed the most economical way for the global energy industry to remove CO2 and other contaminants from fossil fuel power plant emissions and raw natural gas. Ionic liquids are molten salts that do not evaporate, and can be used to replace the current, inefficient, aqueous (water-based) amine technology that was, up until now, the state-of-the-art in emissions control technology. As a byproduct the process sweetens sour contaminated natural gas (representing half of worldwide reserves) to vastly increase natural gas reserves.

Japanese Are Making Dramatic Progress in CCT http://www.nedo.go.jp/kankobutsu/pamphlets/sekitan/cct2006e.pdf
2006 - The New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization
(NEDO) and the Japan Coal Energy Center (JCOAL) are making dramatic progress in Clean Coal Technology (CCT) by reducing CO2 emissions with the most highly advanced clean coal technologies in the world.
Electrostatic Precipitator - Flue gas containing ash and dust passes between two electrodes that are charged by a high voltage current. The negatively charged ash and dust are attracted toward and deposited on the cathode.
Flue Gas Desulfurizer - Limestone slurry is injected into the flue gas to induce a reaction between the limestone and the sulfur oxides in the flue gas to form calcium sulfite, which is further reacted with oxygen to form gypsum. The gypsum is then separated as a product.
Flue Gas Denitrizer - Ammonia is injected into the flue gas containing nitrogen
oxides. The gas mixture is introduced to a metallic catalyst (a substance which induces chemical reactions). The nitrogen oxides in the flue gas undergo catalyst-induced chemical reactions, causing them to decompose into nitrogen and water.
Tokyo to Begin Carbon Capture & Storage Project in 2010
Feb 20, 2009 - By March 2010 Tokyo will start storing CO2 under the seabed at the rate of 100,000 tons per year with a capacity to store 150 billion tons of CO2 in Japan underground and in surrounding coastal underseas areas. The daily rate of CO2 capture at this project is slightly under 11.5 tons per hour; which is faster than Vattenfall's pilot CCS project in Germany at 10 tons per hour.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/02/tokyo-carbon-capture-storage-project-2010.php?daylife=1&dcitc=daylife-article

Germany - Vattenfall's Project on CCS Jan 20, 2009 - As part of ongoing research and development efforts, Vattenfall initiated a project on carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) in 2001. The goal of the project is to develop commercial concepts for CCS at power plants between 2015 and 2020. On 9 Sep 2008 a 30 MW pilot plant with carbon capture and storage began operation to test technology that so far only has been tested in laboratories. http://www.vattenfall.com/www/co2_en/co2_en/index.jsp

Norway Current Sequestering a Million Tons of CO2 Per Year. In 1991, Norway became the first country to impose a federal tax (carbon trading) on atmospheric CO2 emissions from coal-fired power plants. Norway's strong financial incentive to develop strategies for safe disposal of CO2 waste has lead to advanced technology in capturing excess CO2 and injecting it underground, to remain sequestered from the atmosphere for thousands of years. Since 1996, Norway has been injecting about a million tons of CO2 per year. https://www.llnl.gov/str/Johnson.html
Membrane Technology - Aug 2, 2008 - http://www.engineerlive.com/Oil-and-Gas-Engineer/Environment_Solution/New_membranes_design_will_improve_carbon_dioxide_capture/19942 Carbon dioxide (CO2) gases from coal-fired power plants must be separated from waste gases and sequestered in the ground. The current methods uses expensive separation chemicals. A new membrane technology internationally patented by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim. Using membranes made from a plastic material that has been structured by means of nano technology, it catches CO2 while other waste gases pass freely. Its effectiveness increases proportionally to the concentration of CO2 in the gas. This method, known as facilitated transport, is comparable to the way human lungs get rid of CO2 when we breathe: it is both a complex and an effective mechanism. Instead of using a filter that separates directly between CO2 and other molecules, NTNU uses a fixed carrier agent in the membrane that helps the CO2 molecules to form the chemical bicarbonate which is then quickly transported through the membrane. In this manner, the CO2 is released while the other gases are retained by the membrane.

Update Source - Carbon Capture Journal - http://www.carboncapturejournal.com/morenews.php?Category=Separation
Carbon Capture Journal is specifically about developments with industrial scale carbon capture and geological storage technology, with news about the major projects and development with government policy.