Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 05/21/2008 5:37:59 AM PDT by saganite
Researchers in Wyoming report development of a low-cost carbon filter that can remove 90 percent of carbon dioxide gas from the smokestacks of electric power plants that burn coal and other fossil fuels.
Maciej Radosz and colleagues at Wyoming's Soft Materials Laboratory cite the pressing need for simple, inexpensive new technologies to remove carbon dioxide from smokestack gases. Coal-burning electric power plants are major sources of the greenhouse gas, and control measures may be required in the future.
The study describes a new carbon dioxide-capture process, called a Carbon Filter Process, designed to meet the need. It uses a simple, low-cost filter filled with porous carbonaceous sorbent that works at low pressures. Modeling data and laboratory tests suggest that the device works better than existing technologies at a fraction of their cost.
Adapt this to auto tailpipes (if the catalytic converter doesn't take out the CO2 already) and the global warming crisis is, solved.
Cheers!
You’d see the AGW people shouting with delight,
IF
reducing CO2 were actually their goal.
Reducing our lifestyle is the actual goal, so don’t expect them to be too excited about a smokestack scrubber that allows the power plant output to remain the same or greater with reduced CO2.
Watch them and remember.
So I went to the link which in turn linked the researcher's technical paper.
The short answer to "where does the CO2 go" -- you have to PUT it somewhere (think geological formation), but if you do it right, it's a twofer! You can use it for enhanced oil and gas recovery techniques. From the paper:
"Although a typical destination of the captured CO2 is commonly envisioned to be some form of passive geologic storage or other storage type, this work is also motivated by a vision of utilizing the captured CO2 to displace valuable oil and coal-bed methane stranded in mature reservoirs, as illustrated in Figure 1, before storing it permanently in spent reservoirs. Such a CO2-driven displacement is referred to as enhanced oil recovery (EOR) and enhanced coal-bed methane recovery (ECBMR)."
but at least there will be no greenhouse gasses....
Seriously...has anyone picked up on just what level of CO2 would be acceptable?
Maybe just to maintain 25% of vegetation?,50%, or maybe 75%?
People are planting trees like mad, and there is a great movement to "save the forests"...so would not it be prudent to increase CO2 output just to support the increased vegetation?
Not good enough. We need 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% removed. Al Gore says so.
Exactly!!!!!!
This is gonna piss off the Gorons!
It appears to take about 10 years to get a politician to believe some econazi’s feel-good rape the citizen’s wallet BS. Then it porbably take 50 years, if then, for them to admit to the truth.
There is no AGW and CO2 is not the cause.
(They picked CO2 because water vapor would be harder to sell as APG, harder to find reasons to tax and/or regulate.)
“There is no safe level of CO2”
That worked for the Surgeon General it’ll work for Algore.
Costing less and working better is a death knell to the process. Now, if the report stated that it was less efficient and cost more, our congress would immediately appropriate billions and billions to fund it.
Why would it piss off the Gorons? Aren’t they in favor of reducing CO2?
(see my post 5)
As a matter of fact, satellite imagery reveals that the forested area of the planet has steadily risen every year since such surveys began.
Save the planet. Kill the trees...
The fact that it is simple, inexpensive and effective is enough to assure that it will never be put to common use.
2008 will be the year that I have officially lost all faith in humankind.
This could be excellent news for coal fired power plants.
Should I sell all of those carbon credits I have in my drawer at home?
I wrote a little analysis of synfuel upgrades to existing coal plants. I was going to give it a vanity thread, but instead I think I’ll post it here.
A 1GWe coal-fired power plant consumes ~ 7400 tons of coal per day, at a 2008 fuel cost of over $900K (at today’s rather high coal price of $120 per ton).
The plant produces 24 million kw/h per day, worth about $1.44M at $0.06 per kw/h.
The $540,000/day difference in fuel cost vs. electricity cost must cover plant amortization and operations.
Modern coal plants perform extensive processing of this coal (pulverizing, cleaning, etc.) before burning it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karrick_process -
By adding a “Karrick process” step to the pre-processing, the coal demand of the plant would increase by about 1/3 - i.e. the plant would require 9200 tons of coal worth $1.2M per day.
However, in addtion to producing the $1.44M worth of electricity per day, the “Karrick process” augumented plant would produce 9200 barrels of synthetic crude per day, worth over $1.1M at todays extremely high oil prices.
Total US coal-fired powerplant installed capacity is over 300 GWe. If half of these plants were equipped to also produce syncrude, they would increase US domestic crude oil production by 16%.
Most of the infrastucture required for coal liquification is ALREADY in place at these power plants, and they are already cleared for the environmental impact. The cost of adding a 9K barrel/day Karrick extractor to an existing 1GW coal plant should be less than 1/5th the cost of building an identically sized (in output) F/T or “Bergius process” coal liquification plant.
At > $100/barrel crude prices, the payback time for adding a “Karrick process” step to a 1GW coal power plant would be less than two years.
Oops.
> the plant would require 9200 tons of coal
Little typo on my calculator there. 9900 tons of coal is the correct number, with corresponding increases in the amount of oil extracted as well.
Two year payback time is more than acceptable!
My understanding is that if it fell below 200 ppm, most vegitation would die.
There would still be NO reason to trap or separate the smokestack CO2.
AGW is socialist myth.
>> There would still be NO reason to trap or separate the smokestack CO2.
Roger your point, but I disagree, on a technicality.
IF (big if) ONLY free market forces were driving reduction in CO2 (for whatever reason), THEN there would be a reason to do it.
I totally agree that the Global Warmism religion is bogus.
Now we can build more coal-burning power plants.
The US has plenty of coal.
Wow, now all we have to do is burn the saturated filter in the same boiler as the one from which it came, right?
Seriously, aren’t we just trying to put the Genie back in the bottle?
Sorry, but I’m way more worried about sulfer and mercury emissions than I am plant food coming out the end of a pipe.
Critics: Polar bear plan must fight global warming (Didja smell that one coming?)
McCain Courts Leftwing Bloggers
NOAA: Global Warming Means Fewer, Not More Hurricanes
Global Warming on Free Republic
Are there any plans that you know of to do this?
And so should you be more worried since those are real problems and CO2 isn’t but since the Supreme Court said CO2 should be considered a green house gas and regulated as such that makes it a problem the coal burning power plants need to deal with. If 90% of those CO2 emissions can be dealt with in a cost effective manner then maybe we can continue to build them.
Somebody needs to post that “Nailed it” graphic.
That was my first response too. Great answer.
This is remarkably good news. Carbon capture and sequestration at the source is identified as one of the 12 wedges that can be used to reduce civilizations carbon emissions.
Capture CO2 at baseload power plant (PDF)
The main unknown is the total sequestration capacity -- there's a wide range of estimates. But if this is truly commercially viable, this is an important advance.
> Are there any plans that you know of to do this?
Unfortunately, not in the USA. I understand China is trying this.
Adding Karrick pre-processing to a coal-powered electrical power plant would increase the plant’s CO2 emissions by about 10% to 15%. To many so-called Greens, this would be a crime against humanity.
The GW cultists are trying to kill every coal plant under construction in the US. So far they are pretty successful. This is the major risk in building these add-ons. You can invest $500 million, get 70% of the construction complete, and then environmental lawsuits can shut you down. Industry is also afraid that the new administration in 2009 will enact carbon taxes or CO2 caps.
China is deploying about two coal powerplants per week.
Thanks for the ping. Goes to show that private research works.
I wonder if they could sequester the CO2 and use it in "enhanced greenhouses" e.g. for plant growth. You know, like corn.
Cheers!
"No, actually it's...synfuel!"
"Bookmarking for later, dude.
Cheers!
>>Adapt this to auto tailpipes (if the catalytic converter doesn’t take out the CO2 already)
It doesn’t.
I don't. I think all technologies need to be investigated. I think Greenpeace is dedicated to a particular viewpoint and they won't consider how new and advanced technologies could address climate change.
exactly. carbon dioxide is plant food, not pollution.
we need scrubbers for other emissions, but CO2 isn’t one of them.
Nice picture, only it's of the water cooling towers at a power plant, and not the "smoke stacks", as they claim.
These "smoke stacks" ARE, however, emitting a "greenhouse gas"...water vapor....
If greenpeace said up, I’d think down but I wanted to show that even the green mafia was against this plan.
Actually...I think it’s 3 smoke stacks. It looks like a coal-fired unit with flue gas going through a wet scrubbed system. That is why you see the high moisture content.
Didn’t AlBore invent the catalytic converter at about the same time that he invented the internet?
I've also noticed that a lot of Greenpeace's and other evo-wacko videos showing TONS of pollution are shot on extremely cold days, when anything warm will look like it's smoking....
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