| Submit your comments on this article |
| Home Front Economy |
| First CO2-free coal power plant announced |
| 2007-12-20 |
| Coal is almost the perfect fuel. It's cheap and absurdly abundant -- especially in the United States, which has the world's larges reserves. There's just that tiny problem of massive climate-altering carbon dioxide emissions. Or is there? The FutureGen Alliance -- a coalition of private power companies and the U.S. Department of Energy -- thinks it can make power cleanly by siphoning off the carbon dioxide and Unlike a regular coal power plant, the FutureGen plant won't actually burn coal but gasify it by exposing powdered coal to oxygen in a high-pressure heated chamber. The system yields several gases which are processed into hydrogen, which burns in a turbine to produce electricity, and carbon-dioxide, which is Proponents say that gasification is easier than capturing CO2 from a regular power plant because it produces it produces a smaller volume of exhaust and it easily traps most other pollutants from coal, such as Mercury. Assuming that global warming is true and all this is somehow necessary: Is it just me or does it seem that eventually the Earth is going to want to burp this stuff up? You can't put too much pressure on the containment geology or it's going to crack and leak, if it isn't leaking already. Maybe it would be better to pump this stuff into the void between Al Gore's ears. What is so wrong with a Thorium reactor or solar that they need to pray that all this weird stuff actually works in the long run instead of making a bigger bomb that our grandkids would have to deal with rather than the smaller bomb our kids would have to? |
| Posted by:gorb |
| #16 "Perfect is the enemy of the better." |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2007-12-20 20:52 |
| #15 Burn Anthracite. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2007-12-20 16:15 |
| #14 Have to disagree with you Remoteman. These guys are spending 4 times the amount of resources because the political goal supersedes the economic goal of efficiently generating electricity. It misallocates money, labor, and brainpower that could be used to increase our well being instead of burying a gas several miles underground. That is sin in my book and makes every American just a bit poorer. More of this stupidity and we, as a nation, really will end up poor. And presumably we give the tech to China Pray that the Chinese are stupid enough to pay 4 times the price for a power plant. Somehow I doubt it. |
| Posted by: ed 2007-12-20 16:12 |
| #13 Better yet, pipe it into greenhouses, go in periodicly to harvest whatever you've planted. (Growth should be fantastic) |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2007-12-20 15:56 |
| #12 The FutureGen Alliance -- a coalition of private power companies and the U.S. Department of Energy and notice the strong involvement of private industry - ultimately its market forces that will lead to more innovation. |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2007-12-20 15:55 |
| #11 I have a mental image of our descendants running turbines powered by all that compressed CO-2. (After they figure out it's all a scam) |
| Posted by: Redneck Jim 2007-12-20 15:54 |
| #10 This is just another example, among many, of the focus of the innovative western mind on the issue of next-gen energy sources. This kind of stuff thrills me because it gives me the confidence that one or several of these technologies is going to pan out, that we will reduced (significantly) our dependence on foriegn oil and that the arabs will be too poor to export their evil dogma. Win win all around. |
| Posted by: remoteman 2007-12-20 15:45 |
| #9 And presumably we give the tech to China as well to reduce their emissions. Nah, they'll just steal it... |
| Posted by: Raj 2007-12-20 12:16 |
| #8 IIUC there are a number of options for sequestring the CO2. Given our huge coal resources, and the need for power that has different time charecteristics than wind, solar, etc this could be a very valuable technology. Sure its more expensive than conventional coal, but given the increasing need to control emmissions, this is one good tool to have in the arsenal. And presumably we give the tech to China as well to reduce their emissions. |
| Posted by: Liberalhawk 2007-12-20 11:52 |
| #7 Couple submissions: there was an attempt to build a modern coal plant outside of Garden City Kansas using Colorado coal (IIUC) - ultra modern. The Sierra Club (WTF they care about western Kansas you can only guess) lobbied against it and it was turned down (appeals pending). As for pumping the gas underground, see Hutchinson, KS. |
| Posted by: swksvolFF 2007-12-20 11:14 |
| #6 In the time period since Kyoto was signed China's CO2 production has gone up 55% and we've exported a great deal of our manufacturing base there. Sure, for a lot more than a coal plant costs we can build one where the CO2 is pumped back into the ground. We'll still have ten years where we buy power-intensive stuff to manufacture from overseas, at least until our credit cards are cancelled. Then we won't be able to build power plants at all. While this will handle CO2 production on a local level I believe it'll go up globally... |
| Posted by: Abdominal Snowman 2007-12-20 10:34 |
| #5 I remember reading about an idea of growing algae big time using CO2. We could have huge algae beds on a CO2 bender producing O2 like Jack the Pig. Then the algae is processed to become a biofuel. Don't know how it pencils, though, so let's not get Popular Science Ga-Ga™ before we check it out. |
| Posted by: Alaska Paul 2007-12-20 09:19 |
| #4 Jeebus. What a waste of money. $1.2-billion for a 275 MW plant. You can build a 1000 MW conventional combined cycle coal fired plant and have a large chunk left over. The gasification will produce hydrogen to run a gas turbine in a combined cycle generating plant. Carbon monoxide - reacted with high temp steam to produce H2 and CO2. hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide - turned into elemental sulfur and sold. arsenic - solidified with the rest of the slag. Probably sold for concrete or road building filler. I suspect soon there will be an excess of CO2 to pump down oil wells and they will end up paying to pump it into the ground. power requirements to run the CO2 extraction Not to mention the thermodynamic losses to produce the hydrogen. |
| Posted by: ed 2007-12-20 08:32 |
| #3 The power requirements to run the CO2 extraction are about 10% of the plant output. So its pretty easy math to say we'll have to build 1 new power plant in 10 just to run the CO2 system. |
| Posted by: BrerRabbit 2007-12-20 08:05 |
| #2 What are they gonna do with the other gases given off as a result of coal gassification? Carbon monoxide, hydrogen sulfide, sulfur dioxide? And what about the arsenic? Hmmm? I think it's a pretty good idea to do this but there are some other hazards not mentioned here. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2007-12-20 07:50 |
| #1 Yes, it sounds like a ripe candidate for a future accident and a mass asphyxiation. |
| Posted by: eLarson 2007-12-20 07:41 |