Much cleaner electricity from coal with new technologies....

Today's post: Wednesday, 3-10-2010

We need an 80% reduction in fossil fuel use by 2050 to avoid the worst global warming effects. And, practically speaking, we need to also double our electricity generation and double the useful work done per unit of electricity & other energy sources as well during that same time to have a decent economy.

At some point, the oil that we’ve been using to power much of our economy will begin to run low enough that our world economy will shrink due to lack of supply or excessive costs or both.

And, once the demand for oil picks up again with the apparent economic recovery or supply begins to plateau or drop, the prices will again go back up. That will cause more hard times economically unless we have enough alternative sources of energy to turn to.

Further, it’s extremely clear that the most supported and economically beneficial solution to add energy that does not use oil nor burn fossil fuels to release more CO2 into air that already has too much is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy production, particularly those that generate electricity & to dramatically increase energy efficiency and reduce the amount of energy that is now wasted.

And, of those, the more important long range solution is to build massive amounts of new renewable energy generation.

Today’s post:

Just after my last post, I got word for the Bay Area Tech Wire email service that:


“(Menlo Park, Calif.) Menlo Park-based SRI International, a nonprofit research and development institute, has landed $4.5 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to evaluate the viability of using a special process to capture carbon dioxide at coal gasification power plants. The company is partnering with GreatPoint Energy on the project, expected to be completed in 2012. GreatPoint has developed a technology called "Bluegas" for converting coal into hydrogen and synthetic natural gas.
http://www.sri.com/news/releases/030310.html

Menlo Park, Calif. —March 3, 2010—SRI International, an independent nonprofit research and development institute, announced today it has been awarded a $4.5M Department of Energy (DoE) project evaluate the technical and economic viability of carbon dioxide capture using an ammonium carbonate-ammonium bicarbonate (AC-ABC) process at gasification plants, including integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants.

This new project is one of several projects at SRI aimed at finding cost-effective ways to recover carbon dioxide from power plants so it can be sequestered. One of the advantages of the AC-ABC process is that it removes carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide at pressure, resulting in less energy needed to capture the carbon dioxide. In addition, the AC-ABC approach has the potential to be commercialized at a low cost and in a relatively short amount of time because it does not require the development of novel materials, solvents, or reactor configurations.

The research project, which is estimated to be completed in 2012, will include a field test at a coal gasifier that is operated by SRI's partner on the project, GreatPoint Energy.

http://www.greatpointenergy.com/

GreatPoint Energy
222 Third Street
Cambridge, MA 02142
info@greatpointenergy.com
Phone: 617.401.8760
Fax: 617.849.5691”

If I read this correctly, I think it means that it will be possible to set up a plant that turns coal into methane; then uses the methane efficiently with no air pollution other than CO2 using Bloom Energy’s new “servers” that use a lower cost fuel cell.

(See http://www.bloomenergy.com for more details.)

Then the exhaust can go through this “ammonium carbonate-ammonium bicarbonate (AC-ABC) process” followed by sending the remainder to a “digester” where remaining CO2 is used by algae to make biofuels; and the CO2 sequestered by the “ammonium carbonate-ammonium bicarbonate (AC-ABC) process” can then be sent to a “digester” that part of the CO2 is used by algae to make biofuels.

In this way coal can be processed into methane which essentially will be turned into electricity, water vapor, and biofuels.

To be sure, this will not be cheap; and when the biofuels are burned the CO2 will be released.

But it would or will make electricity with no air pollution released other than CO2 and it may be a way that countries such as the United States and China with large coal deposits can use far less petroleum for fuels due to the large amount of biofuels produced.

They can then do as J. Paul Getty foresaw years ago, and mostly use petroleum to make petrochemicals.

It will also help slow the demand for and price increases for petroleum and fuels for transport by supplying abundant biofuels.

The math and processes to make this work cost efficiently may slow its adoption at first.

But it’s big appeal is that it is a clean energy way to keep from having to drop the use of coal entirely starting from a point where we and the Chinese are so heavily dependent on coal.

Also, a very strong point in its favor is that these combination power plants can be located close to the coal and minimize having to transport coal long distances because you can much more efficiently set up transmission lines for the electricity and pipelines for the biofuels. This will be of great value in China where I’ve read that snow has sometimes seriously blocked the trains carrying coal from the West part where it’s mined to the Eastern part where most of the population and power plants are now located.