"Clean" coal? Check it out:

[BridgeTheGap]

http://beyondoil.nrdc.org/news/gas-from-coal.php?gclid=CLaMqvj1npQCFRdinAodlUx8fQ

[MercutioATC]

1. All of the "anti-clean-coal" stuff I've seen presents worst-case scenarios.

My argument is that it's still a fossil fuel...and therefore still in limited supply. However, with CO2 sequestration and responsible mining (look at Montana as a model instead of West Virginia) it's a feasible transition plan, in my opinion.

We're not going to get an overnight change to renewable energy. In the interim, I'd rather see clean coal than imported oil.

[Radical Activist]

3. No, it isn't feasible as a transition.

Carbon capture technology isn't scientifically proven nor is it economically viable. Even if they get it to work someday it will be far more expensive than wind and solar. The coal companies aren't being honest about how much more expensive it is to do carbon capture.

We don't need a clean coal transition because we already have wind and solar technologies ready to go right now. The clean coal scams won't be ready for at least another 15-20 years when it will be far too late to start acting on global warming. Using carbon capture as a transition while we wait for real renewable energies equates to doing absolutely nothing for the next decade while we funnel taxpayer subsidies to the coal industry for research. Why not spend the money on building clean renewable energy instead?

[MercutioATC]

5. I think you're a little pessimistic about how far they've come.

CTL technology has been used since WWII. CO2 sequestration has been successful on a small scale. The main reason it hasn't been done on a larger scale is that CO2 is not technically considered a pollutant so there's no requirement to deal with it. It's a matter of lax regulations, not technological capability.

We import roughly 4.4B barrels of oil per year. I completely agree with moving to 100% renewable energy, but that will take time.

In the interim, I'd rather see us using coal we have here than importing oil.

[kristopher]

7. You are way off target

Even the most optimistic forecasts for the technology put it 15-20 years out. *IF* you really want immediate results then the answer is simple: wind and solar. Both provide excellent EROEI AND they are extremely quick and easy to bring online. Couple that with switching at least 1/2 of the personal transportation fleet to V2G EVs, and instead of 15-20 where years we would be doing nothing except waiting and tinkering, we will have created critical mass to solve both the energy and climate change problems.

There is also the fact that CC&S is, at this moment, nothing more than a pig-in-a-poke.

[madokie]

8. You keep saying that

pig in a poke. If you would research using a gasifier instead of direct burning of coal you would find that about half as much co2 is made to start with, before you capture it or store it or anything, for the same amount of energy some studies I've read say as much as 60% less co2. It would be a relatively quick and easy modification to make too as all the rest of the plant is still usable and pretty much as it is. Wind and solar is and will be great but it will take a long time before we can do away with coal or nuclear altogether, if ever.

[Radical Activist]

10. How much does it cost?

When you add the cost of gasification and carbon capture then wind and solar are more affordable. You have to start asking if its really worth the billions in subsidies and higher energy costs just to prop up a dying coal industry. Clean coal is the new ethanol.

We can build new wind and solar faster and cheaper than we can transition over to clean coal. And its no small expense to modify a coal fire plant to coal gasification. Its a completely different process.

[madokie]

11. forget the carbon capture at this time and only benefit from the less CO2 being produced

How much could it cost to change that one component as compared to building a whole plant from scratch. In a lot of cases I would suspect it could be a project that would be possible to do as the plant stayed in production. At some point there would be some down time while the switch is made but a lot of the prep work could be done before hand.

[Radical Activist]

12. I doubt it.

I'd be interested in reading anything showing that its so easy to transfer over. But I think coal fire and coal gasification are two very different types of power plant and its almost like building a new one. And in the end, they would still be producing CO2.

We're better off just shutting down the oldest, dirtiest coal fire plants and building renewables plus efficiency programs. Its entirely feasible and affordable. There are current examples of countries and towns that have done that already. There aren't examples of countries and towns that have affordabley switched over to clean coal.

[madokie]

13. I understand it to be two different types of burners pretty much and thats all

the rest of the plant is the same. do a little reading up on them

[Radical Activist]

23. I've read a lot about them

and you still haven't provided a link to support your claim.

[madokie]

27. The heart of gasification-based systems is the gasifier.

It appears to me that there is some big improvements to be made in changing the way the coal is burned without the large outlay of cash as building a plant from scratch would be. I'll say it right up front that I believe that burning fossil fuels is killing us and we need to quit that as soon as we can but looks to me like we could clean up the burning process of our coal plants by using a gasifier to help us in buying the time it will take to get all the solar and wind in place. dm

Edit to add link: http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/gasification/howgasificationworks.html

A gasifier converts hydrocarbon feedstock into gaseous components by applying heat under pressure in the presence of steam.

A gasifier differs from a combustor in that the amount of air or oxygen available inside the gasifier is carefully controlled so that only a relatively small portion of the fuel burns completely. This "partial oxidation" process provides the heat. Rather than burning, most of the carbon-containing feedstock is chemically broken apart by the gasifier's heat and pressure, setting into motion chemical reactions that produce "syngas." Syngas is primarily hydrogen, carbon monoxide and other gaseous constituents; the composition of which can vary depending upon the conditions in the gasifier and the type of feedstock.

Minerals in the fuel (i.e., the rocks, dirt and other impurities which don't gasify like carbon-based constituents) separate and leave the bottom of the gasifier either as an inert glass-like slag or other marketable solid products. Only a small fraction of the mineral matter is blown out of the gasifier as fly ash and requires removal downstream.

Sulfur impurities in the feedstock are converted to hydrogen sulfide and carbonyl sulfide, from which sulfur can be easily extracted, typically as elemental sulfur or sulfuric acid, both valuable byproducts. Nitrogen oxides, another potential pollutant, are not formed in the oxygen-deficient (reducing) environment of the gasifier; instead, ammonia is created by nitrogen-hydrogen reactions. The ammonia can be easily stripped out of the gas stream.

In Integrated Gasification Combined-Cycle (IGCC) systems, the syngas is cleaned of its hydrogen sulfide, ammonia and particulate matter and is burned as fuel in a combustion turbine (much like natural gas is burned in a turbine). The combustion turbine drives an electric generator. Hot air from the combustion turbine can be channeled back to the gasifier or the air separation unit, while exhaust heat from the combustion turbine is recovered and used to boil water, creating steam for a steam turbine-generator.

The use of these two types of turbines - a combustion turbine and a steam turbine - in combination, known as a "combined cycle," is one reason why gasification-based power systems can achieve unprecedented power generation efficiencies. Currently, commercially available gasification-based systems can operate at around 42% efficiencies; in the future, these systems may be able to achieve efficiencies approaching 60%. (A conventional coal-based boiler plant, by contrast, employs only a steam turbine-generator and is typically limited to 33-40% efficiencies.)

Higher efficiencies mean that less fuel is used to generate the rated power, resulting in better economics (which can mean lower costs to ratepayers) and the formation of fewer greenhouse gases (a 60%-efficient gasification power plant can cut the formation of carbon dioxide by 40% compared to a typical coal combustion plant). my bolding

[Radical Activist]

30. Why would we "buy ourselves time" with a technology that is

1) more expensive, and
2) dirtier than other alternatives.

This makes no sense for anyone but the coal industry. And nothing you posted supports your claim that its cheap to convert the plant, which is a fantasy. We can significantly reduce CO2 emissions from most coal fire power plants by updating pollution control equipment and making them more efficient, even without gasification. But that doesn't make coal the best option, and industry has resisted even that expense.

[kristopher]

14. Wind VS Coal gasification and carbon sequestration

There is rock solid proof that your assertions are false. There was a recent request for proposals mandated by the Delaware State Legislature for new, in-state power generation. This RFP was oriented around a desire by the regional utility to build a CGCS plant. Out of the blue, an upstart wind power company also bid for the project - and won decisively!

The offshore project proposed guaranteed prices for 25 years. The coal plan couldn't even guarantee prices at startup. It was a pig in a poke that state regulators and independent experts overwhelmingly rejected as pie-in-the-sky promises with prices that reached the same altitude as the pie; AND THAT WAS ALLOWING THE BIDDER TO EXCLUDE CARBON CAPTURE AND SEQUESTRATION FROM THE BID.

http://depsc.delaware.gov/irp.shtml

[madokie]

17. I would like to see that rock solid proof if you don't mind

exactly what assertions are false btw.

[kristopher]

19. Everything you are saying about the viability of CGCS.

The proof is at the link I provided. Thousands of pages of documentation on coal gasification, carbon capture, carbon sequestration versus wind as an option. Technology, direct costs, external costs, cost comparisons, future costs - it's all right there for your reference.

They approved the offshore wind farm about 2 weeks ago.

[madokie]

20. so in other words I take it you aren't very familiar with gasifiers are you

at the onset all I want to do is have a discussion on using a gasifier but I guess thats to not be. I'll go away and leave you alone to your wind and solar is the all.
peace

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gasification

Add: Gasification is a process that converts carbonaceous materials, such as coal, petroleum, or biomass, into carbon monoxide and hydrogen by reacting the raw material at high temperatures with a controlled amount of oxygen and/or steam. The resulting gas mixture is called synthesis gas or syngas and is itself a fuel. Gasification is a very efficient method for extracting energy from many different types of organic materials, and also has applications as a clean waste disposal technique.

The advantage of gasification is that using the syngas is more efficient than direct combustion of the original fuel, more of the energy contained in the fuel is extracted. Syngas may be burned directly in internal combustion engines, used to produce methanol and hydrogen, or converted via the Fischer-Tropsch process into synthetic fuel. Gasification can also begin with materials that are not otherwise useful fuels, such as biomass or organic waste. In addition, the high-temperature combustion refines out corrosive ash elements such as chloride and potassium, allowing clean gas production from otherwise problematic fuels.

[kristopher]

21. That is like saying what's better, cancer or a heart attack.

The issue is twofold: 1) how do we meet our energy needs 2) while simultaneously achieving dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions?

You seem to think that coal gasification accomplishes that. It doesn't even come close.

If you want to convince anyone to your point of view, then prove our intuitive understanding wrong by explaining where the entire carbon content of the mined coal and the fuel used for processing it into synfuel will end up. General percentages are fine, we can extrapolate from there.

[Radical Activist]

9. Even coal company CEO's have said 15-20 years

is the expected time frame.
Doing it on a small scale is nothing compared to the massive amount of new storage facilities and hundreds of miles of new pipelines it would take to make this work. The whole thing is completely unfeasible.

[Radical Activist]

2. There are some environmental groups like the Clean Air Task Force

that are always shilling for the coal industry and their clean coal scams. I think they're going to find their support eroding as people become more informed about how unclean "clean coal" really is.

[ramapo]

4. Even if....

...coal was truly "clean", there is still the absolute environmental destruction caused by strip mining and mountaintop removal.

[MercutioATC]

6. You do realize that there are other ways of mining coal, right?

Just because West Virginia lops off mountaintops doesn't mean that other states (like Montana) don't have ways of mining coal with very little long-term ecological impact.

[JohnWxy]

15. Tampa Electric has been operating an IGCC plant since 1996. link:

an article in Discover magazine:

http://discovermagazine.com/2006/dec/clean-coal-technology/

He's right. No smoke mars the lazy blue Florida sky. The Polk plant captures all its fly ash, 98 percent of its sulfur—which causes acid rain—and nearly all its nitrogen oxides, the main component of the brown haze that hangs over many cities. Built to demonstrate the feasibility of a new way to wring economical power from coal without belching assorted toxins into the air, the $600 million plant has been running steadily since 1996. "It makes the lowest-cost electricity on TECO's grid," Shorter says. "It also has very, very low emissions. Particulate matter is almost undetectable."

What is both distressing and remarkable about the Polk plant is that it could do much more. "There's no requirement for mercury capture, but 95 percent of it could be captured very easily," Shorter adds. More important, the plant could also capture nearly all of coal's most elusive and potentially disastrous emissions: carbon dioxide, the main gas that drives global warming.
~~
~~
The smoke-free skies above the Polk plant hint at a way out. We now have the technology to capture and store most of the carbon dioxide generated by burning coal. "It's very important what we do with the next 25 years of coal plants," says Holdren. "If all those coal plants are built without carbon control, the amount of carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere would make it virtually impossible to stabilize atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at a moderate level." Right now the Polk power plant is one of just four of its kind in the world. If we are going to survive our coal-fueled future, we will probably need a whole lot more like it.


The technology behind the Polk plant is called an integrated gasification combined cycle—a mouthful usually shortened to IGCC. Unlike conventional coal-fired generators, IGCC plants don't actually burn the coal itself; they convert it into gas and burn the gas. This highly efficient process makes it possible to selectively pull out the resulting emissions, including carbon dioxide, which could then be collected and buried rather than released into the air.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Why doesn't the Polk plant capture CO2? ... "There is no incentive for capturing carbon in the United States, India, or China. The most important thing that could happen to drive IGCC forward would be putting a price on CO2 emissions in the form of a mandatory economy-wide 'cap and trade' approach, which is what a Senate resolution passed last summer recommended."

[Radical Activist]

16. It can't capture CO2.

Not without carbon capture technology that isn't ready yet.

What about solid waste from the IGCC plant? How is that being dealt with and where is it getting dumped? The pollutants still have to go somewhere even if it isn't in the air. IGCC plants have a bigger solid waste problem that is rarely discussed.

[NNadir]

18. Could? Could? Could? Could?

In fact there are zero anti-nuke apologists who can make a sentence without the word "could" in it.

No, there are not.

When, in your august opinion, is climate change supposed to become a problem?

Let me guess...never?

The fact is, coal boy, IGCC plants are toys. While you come here to HYPE the TECO IGCC you are either completely ignorant of - or more likely I think, deliberately concealing the fact that the Polk "traditional" coal plant was built right after the highly subsidized trivial TECO IGCC plant.

I note with undesguised contempt, that I have shown previously that the decision to build IGCC coal would only marginally reduce the murderous impact of coal - about which you couldn't care less.

If the Brunswick Nuclear station is typical, it costs $35,000,000 per year in health and environmental destruction in a year of operation like 2003. A putative IGCC plant with sequestration on the other hand would do twice as much environmental and health damage, about $70,000,000 dollars worth. A putative IGCC plant without sequestration - the only kind that has ever been built - would incur charges of $275,000,000. Thus the cost in environmental destruction for replacing just one nuclear plant with an IGCC coal plant would be about $238,000,000 million dollars per year beyond the cost of the nuclear plant.

A Calculation: How Many Trillions of Dollars of Environmental Damage Will IGCC Coal Cost? Note that the bill for that 238,000,000 million per year will be paid largely in flesh, destroyed crops, and destroyed wild lands. You couldn't care less.

If you scratch the surface of an anti-nuke you find a coal apologist, every time.

[eridani]

22. Yet another take

I've also heard about using the CO2 emissions directly to promote algae growth

http://www.rdmag.com/ShowPR.aspx?PUBCODE=014&ACCT=1400000100&ISSUE=0807&RELTYPE=PSC&PRODCODE=000000&PRODLETT=PC&CommonCount=0

Researchers at the Dept. of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory are looking at ways to combine the natural resources of coal and biomass—biomass including such growing things as wheat straw, corn stover, switchgrass, mixed hardwood and distillers’ dried grains with corn fiber, and even algae—but avoid the emission of carbon dioxide.

NETL researchers are studying a process called co-gasification, in which various types of coal and biomass are put together and converted into a gaseous product stream that can be used to produce electricity, hydrogen, chemicals and liquid transportation fuels.

What about the carbon that resides in coal and biomass? Doesn’t it manage to escape into the atmosphere?

“No,” explains researcher Bryan Morreale in the Chemistry and Surface Science Division of NETL’s Office of Research and Development. “With the blending of biomass and coal in the co-gasification process, you decrease the environmental impact because biomass is carbon neutral. If you apply carbon sequestration technologies, you actually have a process that’s carbon negative—it consumes the carbon.”

The process produces a product stream called synthesis gas, which has great flexibility to be used in several ways. That flexibility is one of the advantages of the co-gasification process; another advantage is the contribution to our national security through utilization of an abundant natural resource without environmental consequences.

“Coal is one of the most abundant resources we have. With extensive use of co-gasification, we would reduce our dependence on foreign oil,” Morreale notes.

NETL’s research focuses on energy crops, not food crops. Because co-gasification can use any biomass to produce the synthesis gas, there is no need to develop a particular energy crop. Existing mixed prairie grass, forest residues, waste-wood, and even various waste streams can be converted to synthesis gas. The advantage with co-gasification using coal is that the steady supply of coal supplies a baseline that can be supplemented by biomass whenever available.

[kristopher]

24. Coal for electricity produces over 1.5 TRILLION pounds of CO2/year in USA alone.

And we have already overloaded the atmosphere and oceans. While the technologies you point to have a good place in meeting our energy needs WITHOUT using more fossil fuels, they are not a prescription to allow the continued use of fossil fuels.

[eridani]

25. That's now. What about with methods like those described in the article I cited? n/t

[kristopher]

26. Do you have any idea of how much 1.5 trillion pounds of *anything* is? nt

For example, using 150 pounds as the average weight of a person 1.5T equals the mass of 10 billion people. Can you imagine the facilities you are going to need to construct to deal with that?

[eridani]

28. Whether that would be worth it would depend on comparing paybacks

--with other things we might do.

[kristopher]

31. It has been compared and found to be a TERRIBLE alternative

Along with several other, similar evaluations by various utility regulators, there is this recent episode:
There was a recent request for proposals mandated by the Delaware State Legislature for new, in-state power generation. This RFP was oriented around a desire by the regional utility to build a CGCS plant. Out of the blue, an upstart wind power company also bid for the project - and won decisively!

The offshore project proposed guaranteed prices for 25 years. The coal plan couldn't even guarantee prices at startup. It was a pig in a poke that state regulators and independent experts overwhelmingly rejected as pie-in-the-sky promises with prices that reached the same altitude as the pie; AND THAT WAS ALLOWING THE BIDDER TO EXCLUDE CARBON CAPTURE AND SEQUESTRATION FROM THE BID.

http://depsc.delaware.gov/irp.shtml
For an easy to digest slide presentation on the three competing bids scroll down about 3/4 of the page to:
Independent Consultants Evaluation Report to Commission - Presentation Slides (Feb. 27, 2007)

Download the 123kb file and see the comparative evaluations WITHOUT carbon capture or sequestration factored in.

It should be noted that this is an early preliminary report that made several errors in their analysis that underscored wind and overscored natural gas (for example, they used land based data instead of offshore data for the wind and they didn't account at all for the effect of carbon taxes or caps on the natural gas) This project was evaluated by about a dozen different entities, and the ONLY ones that thought the coal proposal had merit were the people who stood to gain financially if the coal facility were to be built.

Wind won the bid.

[eridani]

39. Thanks for the info

You are more up to speed on this than I am. Maybe you should put a collection of your links in the Research section.

[madokie]

29. There is no doubt in my mind we need to get serious about using gasifiers

in our production of electricity.

http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/powersystems/gasification/index.html

Coal gasification offers one of the most versatile and clean ways to convert coal into electricity, hydrogen, and other valuable energy products.

The first coal gasification electric power plants are now operating commercially in the United States and in other nations, and many experts predict that coal gasification will be at the heart of the future generations of clean coal technology plants for several decades into the future.

[kristopher]

32. Then you are probably making a biased evaluation.

Along with several other, similar evaluations by various utility regulators, there is this recent episode:
There was a recent request for proposals mandated by the Delaware State Legislature for new, in-state power generation. This RFP was oriented around a desire by the regional utility to build a CGCS plant. Out of the blue, an upstart wind power company also bid for the project - and won decisively!

The offshore project proposed guaranteed prices for 25 years. The coal plan couldn't even guarantee prices at startup. It was a pig in a poke that state regulators and independent experts overwhelmingly rejected as pie-in-the-sky promises with prices that reached the same altitude as the pie; AND THAT WAS ALLOWING THE BIDDER TO EXCLUDE CARBON CAPTURE AND SEQUESTRATION FROM THE BID.

http://depsc.delaware.gov/irp.shtml
For an easy to digest slide presentation on the three competing bids scroll down about 3/4 of the page to:
Independent Consultants Evaluation Report to Commission - Presentation Slides (Feb. 27, 2007)

Download the 123kb file and see the comparative evaluations WITHOUT carbon capture or sequestration factored in.

It should be noted that this is an early preliminary report that made several errors in their analysis that underscored wind and overscored natural gas (for example, they used land based data instead of offshore data for the wind and they didn't account at all for the effect of carbon taxes or caps on the natural gas) This project was evaluated by about a dozen different entities, and the ONLY ones that thought the coal proposal had merit were the people who stood to gain financially if the coal facility were to be built.

Wind won the bid.

[Fledermaus]

35. Yes, Increasing efficiency is always the easiest way to reduce CO2

Going from 35% to 50%+ efficiency would benefit everyone. I would like to see all of our coal plants upgraded to this technology.

If we used energy as efficiently as the Japanese or Europeans we would not need any new power plants.

[kristopher]

37. I don't think you can "upgrade" existing plants

I don't think you can "upgrade" existing plants in a cost effective manner - it would be cheaper to build new ones. Then you are comparing the cost of the new one to other generating technologies; AND the gasification of coal is extremely expensive with no ultimate reduction in carbon emissions.

Of course, maybe I'm wrong and that is why they are building so many of them right now instead of building wind farms. :sarcasm:

[Fledermaus]

33. Salvaging biomass from storm destruction could power as much as 10% of U.S. energy needs.

Katrina Cleanup: Wood Waste Creates Biomass Opportunity
Green Energy Resources is pleading with the government to release the wood normally sent to a landfill or burned. Salvaging biomass from storm destruction could power as much as 10% of U.S. energy needs.

HUNTINGTON, N.Y., USA -- Who would have ever thought that someone could actually profit ethically off the destruction from a storm such as hurricane Katrina or other lesser storms?

If your job is selling biomass to utility companies to produce electricity, when you see disasters you also see profit: a powerful storm produces a significant quantity of available wood waste. Those downed trees and limbs are ideal biomass, and they make up the bulk of the clean-up after a storm.

The difficulty is that you need the cooperation of the governments involved. Sometimes the wheels of bureaucracy move slowly, and the we've-always-done-it-this-way mentality gets in the way of better solutions. The old way is to send all this slash to landfills or to just burn it. That serves only to increase the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – without producing any noticeable benefits in either economic growth or usable power.

Even some portions of the wreckage from buildings could be recovered. Formed into pellets, this recycled wood can be used in coal-burning power plants. This is a project ideal for local entrepreneurs willing to take it on. When a building goes down, these local harvesting companies would be the ones to call in to salvage usable portions of the materials that remain. Rather than having to pay someone to haul away all of the destroyed building, the damaged party can actually receive some money for the biomass materials. Getting some money for garbage comes as a small bright spot after the heartbreak of major losses.

http://pesn.com/2005/09/16/9600167_hurricane_biomass/

[kristopher]

34. That is an excellent point.

Much more effective (and intelligent) management of our wastes in general has the potential to help in many ways.

[losthills]

36. These ideas fall under the "drop in a bucket" catagory.......

Little to no measurable impact, and no economic incentive to bother implementing.

(But great PR for "Biofuels can save us" lobbyists with their hands in our wallets and their eyes on our last open spaces....)

[Name removed]

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