From MIT, while “plug-and-play” is cited, it’s just a paper.
Getting the carbon out of emissions
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Many researchers around the world are seeking ways to “scrub” carbon dioxide (CO2) from the emissions of fossil-fuel power plants as a way of curbing the gas that is considered most responsible for global climate change. But most such systems rely on complex plumbing to divert the steam used to drive the turbines that generate power in these plants, and such systems are not practical as retrofits to existing plants.
Now, researchers at MIT have come up with a scrubbing system that requires no steam connection, can operate at lower temperatures, and would essentially be a “plug-and-play” solution that could be added relatively easily to any existing power plant.
The new electrochemical system is described in a paper just published online in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, and written by doctoral student Michael Stern, chemical engineering professor T. Alan Hatton and two others.
The system is a variation on a well-studied technology that uses chemical compounds called amines, which bind with CO2 in the plant’s emission stream and can then release the gas when heated in a separate chamber. But the conventional process requires that almost half of the power plant’s low-pressure steam be diverted to provide the heat needed to force the amines to release the gas. That massive diversion would require such extensive changes to existing power plants that it is not considered economically feasible as a retrofit.
In the new system, an electrochemical process replaces the steam-based separation of amines and CO2. This system only requires electricity, so it can easily be added to an existing plant.
The system uses a solution of amines, injected at the top of an absorption column in which the effluent gases are rising from below. The amines bind with CO2 in the emissions stream and are collected in liquid form at the bottom of the column. Then, they are processed electrochemically, using a metal electrode to force the release of the CO2; the original amine molecules are then regenerated and reused.
As with the conventional thermal-amine scrubber systems, this technology should be capable of removing 90 percent of CO2 from a plant’s emissions, the researchers say. But while the conventional CO2-capture process uses about 40 percent of a plant’s power output, the new system would consume only about 25 percent of the power, making it more attractive.
In addition, while steam-based systems must operate continuously, the all-electric system can be dialed back during peak demand, providing greater operational flexibility, Stern says. “Our system is something you just plug in, so you can quickly turn it down when you have a high cost or high need for electricity,” he says.
Another advantage is that this process produces CO2 under pressure, which is required to inject the gas into underground reservoirs for long-term disposal. Other systems require a separate compressor to pressurize the gas, creating further complexity and inefficiency.
The chemicals themselves — mostly small polyamines — are widely used and easily available industrial materials, says Hatton, the Ralph Landau Professor of Chemical Engineering Practice. Further research will examine which of several such compounds works best in the proposed system.
So far, the research team, which also includes former MIT research scientist Fritz Simeon and Howard Herzog, a senior research engineer at the MIT Energy Initiative, has done mathematical modeling and a small-scale laboratory test of the system. Next, they hope to move on to larger-scale tests to prove the system’s performance. They say it could take five to 10 years for the system to be developed to the point of widespread commercialization.
Because it does not rely on steam from a boiler, this system could also be used for other applications that do not involve steam — such as cement factories, which are among the leading producers of CO2 emissions, Stern says. It could also be used to curb emissions from steel or aluminum plants.
It could also be useful in other CO2 removal, Hatton says, such as in submarines or spacecraft, where carbon dioxide can accumulate to levels that could endanger human health, and must be continually removed.
The work was supported by Siemens AG and by the U.S. Department of Energy through the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy.
Let’s just say for the sake of argument that this system works as stated. Does anyone really think this will placate the warmistas?
CO2! What a fixation. The amount of good to be realized from these scrubbers reminds me of the old lady who urinated in the ocean and thought she caused the tide to come in.
“Ready in 5 to 10 years” – by then the carbon hysteria will have run its course, and even Al Gore
will be sick and tired of the whole dirty mess.
Then when we discover CO2 is not all bad we can release it back into the atmosphere.
This idea is fundamentally flawed because if it worked it would allow us to employ fossil fuels to power economic growth and human progress.
I have an even better idea for CO2 scrubbers. Its called plants. And after they’ve scrubbed CO2 from the atmosphere, we eat them.
We really do need to see more scientists educated in the elementary aspects of the carbon cycle. If this does not happen we will continue to see them advocating for dangerous and unwarranted public policy.
New idea? We were using amine CO2 scrubbers 20 years ago when I was on submarines…
I’m sorry, did they just say a CO2 scrubber uses 40% of a power plant’s output? Does that mean for each kWh I buy from my power company I have to buy an additional one to clear my CO2 contribution? So I seriously am paying double for power? That can’t be right can it?
Conservation of energy.
CO2 capture is two steps forward one (or maybe even 2) steps back. I have trouble seeing how this would help anything…other than creating some more of those green jobs, perhaps.
25% of the electricity vs 40% as mix of low temperature (mostly waste heat) steam and some electricity (for punps, fans and compressors), not sure this is such a bargain.
Often early estimates of new technology tend to err on the optimistic side too but I wish them good luck though I hope the technology never will be needed for CCS. Unless it is for extracting more oil and gas off cause.
We are talking about reducing or eliminating emissions of a trace gas, carbon dioxide, required by green plants to produce the oxygen we need to exist, right? Sounds like a costly solution to a non-problem. The engineers and scientists buying into this BS should be ashamed of themselves. It certainly doesn’t reflect well on their professions.
Another solution in search of a problem.
Don’t they have such systems already on nuclear submarines?
Don’t these idiots realize that for every carbon molecule they put underground they are also sequestering two oxygen atoms. That is the beauty of the natural process, it removes the carbon and leaves the oxygen for me to breath.
Does this system work at night?
After all it’s the nocturnal emissions that are most dangerous.
Low-temperature steam is cheap, Electricity is not, and will become even more expensive.
The system idea was lifted from natural gas processing, where acid gases (CO2, H2S) are scrubbed from a gas stream with an absorbent – usually a fluid based on amines, glycols, or both. The most expensive problem arises in the distillation column where the fluid is degassed:
HEAT + ACID + WATER + METAL = CORROSION.
A 25% performance hit still sucks and is not worth the supposed gain.
What happens to the CO2 once it is released from the amines?
At least it’s not another electrical car or worse another GCM.
A system like this has been in use in US submarines since the 60’s. It is very effective at maintaining CO2 levels in the submarine atmosphere. It is a power hog and I wonder if a 25% reduction in available power plant output is economically feasible.
Sequestering CO2 even if it could be done for free is a stupid idea.
As tadchem says, CO2 scrubbing by amines is well known and often used. This is a wrinkle that may or may not (probably) be an economic alternative to temperature swing. For natural gas or landfill gas processing, the CO2 can be blown off into the atmosphere or cleaned, captured, compressed and chilled for some industrial use. It eventually ends up in the atmosphere. You can also use zeolites to separate the CO2. It they are used in natural gas and landfill gas separations. However, compressing stack gas at 10%-15% CO2 to 200 psi is probably a bit energy intensive. (Actually, my company makes pipeline methane from landfill gas using zeolite separation and compression is darned expensive).
This bit of research doesn’t address the problem with what do you do with the CO2 once you have it.
Well if it works as advertised there is a big and growing market.
” Global demand for coal is expected to grow to 8.9 billion tons by 2016 from 7.9 billion tons this year, with the bulk of new demand — about 700 million tons — coming from China, according to a Peabody Energy study. China is expected to add 240 gigawatts, the equivalent of adding about 160 new coal-fired plants to the 620 operating now, within four years. During that period, India will add an additional 70 gigawatts through more than 46 plants.
“If you poke your head outside of the U.S., coal-fired plants are being built left and right,” said William L. Burns, an energy analyst with Johnson Rice in New Orleans. “Coal is still the cheapest fuel source.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/13/business/energy-environment/china-leads-the-way-as-demand-for-coal-surges-worldwide.html?_r=1&
Despite Obama’s nice little speech he made this week.
A very nice little speech indeed.
Dave says-
“Let’s just say for the sake of argument that this system works as stated. Does anyone really think this will placate the warmistas?”
Excellent question, sir. We already know the answer to that question, from here-
CURRENT AFFAIRS ANALYSIS
ARE ENVIRONMENTALISTS BAD FOR THE PLANET? – TRANSCRIPT OF A RECORDED DOCUMENTARY
Presenter: Justin Rowlatt
BBC4, Broadcast Date: 25.01.10
“TOWNSEND: I was making a speech to nearly 200 really hardcore, deep environmentalists and I played a little thought game on them. I said imagine I am the carbon fairy and I wave a magic wand. We can get rid of all the carbon in the atmosphere, take it down to two hundred fifty parts per million and I will ensure with my little magic wand that we do not go above two degrees of global warming. However, by waving my magic wand I will be interfering with the laws of physics not with people – they will be as selfish, they will be as desiring of status. The cars will get bigger, the houses will get bigger, the planes will fly all over the place but there will be no climate change. And I asked them, would you ask the fairy to wave its magic wand? And about 2 people of the 200 raised their hands.
ROWLATT: That is quite shocking. I bet you were shocked, weren’t you?
TOWNSEND: I was angry. I wasn’t shocked. I was angry because it really showed that they wanted more. They didn’t just want to prevent climate change. They wanted to somehow change people, or at very least for people to know that they had to change.”
@tadchem: as long as you don’t overdo the adsorption, the amine maintains the solution as basic and it wll not be corrosive. However, you eventually have to neutralize the amine, so you need spare tankage and processing equipment. Packed column amine scrubbers are used in landfill gas to pipeline that have catalytic oxygen removal to remove the various halogen acids. They have to be regenerated. Also, I didn’t notice how they planned to handle the backpressure caused by putting the entire exhaust through a liquid scrubber.
An early eye opener that wasn’t in the textbooks was how every time I tried to add a drop of primary (long unbranched carbon chain) amine to a reaction flask, the liquid amine solidified in air as it reacted with CO2 to form a carbamate. The way nitrogen also forms highly polar bonds to boron is the stuff of future atom scale electronics especially since those bonds can be loosened by polar solvents to allow self-assembly to occur where mere hydrocarbon bonds would just polymerize into a permanent mess. CO2 is an awesome organic chemistry solvent in industry since instead of just sitting around as dry ice, under pressure it liquifies into a highly polar solvent that then is “free” to eliminate since it just evaporates away.
-=NikFromNYC=-, Ph.D. (Columbia/Harvard)
@Bob
they would probably spray it in and collect it in trays in the ductwork. I would imagine it would be installed somewhere between the SCR and the FGD.
Form someone who worked on submarines and later in power plants for 35+ years:
1) Yes amine scrubbers work
2) The amines are not environmentally benign
3) There is no ‘waste’ heat in a modern power plant cycle. Unless you can extract heat from 130 F cooling water. Engineers working in these plants are constantly looking to tweak the cycle efficiency to an extract hundredths of a percent more per BTU to reduce costs.
4) Knocking 25% off the plant output would mean burning an extra third again as much fuel (probably coal) and of course that third would also lose 25%.
5) What are you going to do with the waste CO2? Deep well injection is already being fought against by enviros as causing earthquakes and disturbances in the the enviros auras. It’s one of the major false complaints against Fracking.
By then they will have found another boogieman to redistribute our tax money.
Finknottle says: June 28, 2013 at 10:15 am New idea? We were using amine CO2 scrubbers 20 years ago when I was on submarines.
Still, to my knowledge, certainly when I retired in 1995, monoethanolamine MEA scrubbers fore and aft.
Chad says:
June 28, 2013 at 10:17 am
“I’m sorry, did they just say a CO2 scrubber uses 40% of a power plant’s output? Does that mean for each kWh I buy from my power company I have to buy an additional one to clear my CO2 contribution? So I seriously am paying double for power? That can’t be right can it?”
Those are the numbers that are usually cited in connection with CO2 capture. A doubling of prices is to be expected.
Using electrical heating to regenerate amines is troublesome due to the need for very low flux rates to avoid high skin temperatures which cause plating (fouling) on the heating element surface. Once fouling starts the skin temperature increases causing more fouling until the element fails. Usually electrical heating is limited to small installations. For commercial sized CO2 removal projects, low pressure steam in the still column reboilers to prevent high skin temperature fouling and corrosion.
This scheme may be employing some type of water dilution to lower temperatures but that has its own set of recycle problems.
Removal of CO2 is only the start of the process. Transportation and disposal (sequestration) is a much more difficult undertaking. Sudden loss of underground containment would not allow the earth time to adjust to increased CO2 in the atmosphere.
John said:
June 28, 2013 at 9:56 am
“Then when we discover CO2 is not all bad we can release it back into the atmosphere.”
Greens did not care for the “storage” idea for hazardous waste injected into deep disposal wells, or radioactive waste stored in underground mines. So I doubt they’ll go for this either.
I think the idea of removing the CO2 from cement kiln stacks and storing it is the craziest idea yet. Worked in that industry, that is a lot of CO2. Expensive cement will be the result. Devastating to any new construction / infrastructure. More imported cement. (Oops, CO2 into the air somewhere else.) Hey maybe we’ll get back to the all wood warehouses of the late 1800’s. Seen one of those, impressive. Oh yeah, can’t cut trees either. Pretty soon we won’t be able to rub 2 sticks together to make fire. (Not to worry we have: “raw veganism” to take care of the need for that.) Um. Somehow I get the impression that the greens don’t like people.
“There is no ‘waste’ heat in a modern power plant cycle. Unless you can extract heat from 130 F cooling water. ”
There has been work using refrigerant as a working fluid for low grade geo-thermal heat sources. The problem becomes “return on investment” — is the cost of equipment (capital, depreciation, and maintenance) work the low amount of mechanical energy derived. (for offgrid applications — i.e. hot spring in an extremely remote local, especially one that with a cold winter, it has been done with marginally favorable costs)
Same with thermocouples, the W/$ don’t have a workable ROI at low temperature differences.
In some circumstances the 130F “waste heat” is used for commercial/residential heating, though with the cost of running insulated pipes (and thus the high “line losses”) the practical “distance from source” is very low.
So why do they want to build high-tech gadgets with dubious results when they could just >plant some TREES<??? Oh, yeah… you can't dupe people into paying for that….
arthur4563 says: @ June 28, 2013 at 9:55 am
“Ready in 5 to 10 years” – by then the carbon hysteria will have run its course, and even Al Gore will be sick and tired of the whole dirty mess.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Al Gore was born March 31, 1948. He is now 65. With luck he will take his billions and his $$$Government Pension$$$$ and go retire on the Maldives.
CCS (Carbon Capture & Storage) is bunkum, not even worth mentioning, for there is an alternative technology available, attaining the same objective at an incomparably lower price. It is speeding up weathering by dumping two dozen gigatons of ultramafic rocks annually to shallow, high energy marine environments found in shelf areas all over the world, where it is ground to fine dust by tidal currents and waves and reacts with CO₂ readily.
I am not telling you this is the way to go, but if too much CO₂ is an issue, then any technology inherently more expensive (and dangerous!) than this one has to be forgotten fast. Costs. Do. Matter.
Still, I think it is even better to plant trees or simply let forests regrow in agricultural land currently used to produce biofuels. It has a net benefit, even if CO₂ is not an issue, for forests are splendid, especially if they are not allowed to go wild, but are maintained properly.
Earth System Dynamics Discussions, 2, 551–568, 2011
http://www.earth-syst-dynam-discuss.net/2/551/2011/
doi:10.5194/esdd-2-551-2011
Rolling stones; fast weathering of olivine in shallow seas for cost-effective CO₂ capture and mitigation of global warming and ocean acidification
R. D. Schuiling and P. L. de Boer
eh, link – Rolling stones; fast weathering of olivine in shallow seas for cost-effective CO2 capture and mitigation of global warming and ocean acidification
Carbon Fairy,
They want a massive transfer of wealth from individuals to governments and nothing less will do.
Carbon Capture and Storage is a useful technology properly applied. I worked on Coal-to-Liquids plant designs which require scrubbing of syngas generated from coal gasification units. The scrubbing is needed to remove acid gases before feeding syngas to the Fischer-Tropsch reactor. CO2 scrubbed from the syngas via Rectisol or Selectsol (MeOH or amine scrubbing) is compressed and sold to pipelines where it is injected into oil formations to yield 2 bbl of new crude per bbl of F-T product produced. A very efficient and beneficial use for CO2 and a good way to store it essentially permanently. CO2 binds with rock structure releasing oil. As the formation trapped oil and natural gas for millions of years, it will trap CO2 with is a larger and more reactive molecule than CH4. But the current administration and all NGO’s are totally against utilizing such an abundant resource for useful purposes. Therefore the project died. But China is doing just such a project. Another wasteful export of talent and jobs to a foreign country just to “save the environment!”.
Dr. Bob
Co2 scrubbers will be opposed by Warmists even if totally effective and very cheap. It’s not about co2, it’s about SHUTTING DOWN THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY and increasing the powers of politicians and taxes. That’s what it’s about and don’t you let anyone tell you otherwise. That is the ‘hidden agenda’.
So.. when are they going to mandate removal of catalytic converters from cars? What’s worse for the “enviement” – CO or CO2?
From Wiki: “A catalytic converter is a vehicle emissions control device which converts toxic byproducts of combustion in the exhaust of an internal combustion engine to less toxic substances by way of catalysed chemical reactions.”
The introduction of these expensive things were hailed as a godsend for their “less toxic substances”. What’s their next move – an extra amine-CO2 scrubber on car exhausts to produce pure oxygen? I can see lots of cars exploding in flames at this point.
A CO2 scrubber does not produce oxygen. It moves CO2 from the gas (air) being scrubbed to the amine. The amine is then moved to another place and then processed (heated) to make it give up the absorbed CO2. On submarines the CO2 is removed from the air in the sub and then transferred to the seawater outside the sub.
I’m aware of that Agesilaus, I was just trying to get ahead of the greenies in case they wanted to go that way.
Around 2.5Bn years ago, this disaster occurred – the Great Oxygenation Event (from Wiki):
“Free oxygen is toxic to obligate anaerobic organisms and the rising concentrations may have wiped out most of the Earth’s anaerobic inhabitants at the time. It was a catastrophe for these organisms. Cyanobacteria were therefore responsible for one of the most significant extinction events in Earth’s history. Additionally the free oxygen reacted with the atmospheric methane, a greenhouse gas, reducing its concentration and thereby triggering the Huronian glaciation, possibly the longest snowball Earth episode.”
Much was argued at the time between cyanobacteria as the science in minor circles was supposedly “settled”. Massive funds were slushed in the direction of the science, which was largely wasted on lavish meetings in exotic places. The failure of cyanobacteria to sequester the oxygen was their downfall.
/sarc 😉
Sarcasm is tough to transmit via text….heh
@Doug Huffman
you must have been on a city boat (688’s). on the sturgeon’s (637’s), or at least my boat, we just had a scrubber aft.
I was on the 595, but “we do not discuss submarine operations”
Was in the AMR on my boat.
Why even entertain such stupid processes that scrub PLANT FOOD from emissions. As we cool further we NEED MORE NOT LESS CO2!! Just blithering idiots.
A total waste of time, energy, and materials. What are they going to do with the CO2 when they heat the amine compound to release it? Stupid!
Only uses 25% of the plant’s power. That means a decrease in out of 25% and higher electricity costs. Stupid beyond imagination for MIT to study this. They have totally sold out science just for the grand funding. That makes then NOT scientists!
@jedmarlin
I was on the 638. I get it but, the intelligence value is stale at this point and at least 20 years out of date. Nothing that can affect operations has been discussed. It is still the silent service.
Just a little inside joke for us submariners to share
I was on the 595 and I took many readings on our scrubber. We had a guy who would start to refill it when the water got low, then walk away and forget, flooding the darn thing.
Then one time while I was on watch an a-ganger was doing some maintenance and forgot to put the new filters in. He tried to play it off as if I had flooded it.
Darn a-gangers.
Darn scrubbers.
@agesilaus
so you were a cone’r. how many times did you have to start up the still because you took a Hollywood?
No I was an ELT/MM2(N). The smaller still never, ever worked. It was the never ending maintenance project. The 8K worked most of the time. I was on the 588 and 672.
On my boat, the A gang was the hardest working division forward of the frame 57 disconnect, which isn’t saying a whole lot. But, I have some respect for them. It was usually the shower techs, excuse me I meant sonar techs, who usually came aft to start up the still.
Let’s install these all over the world and get CO2 levels down to practically zero.
Then see what happens!
/sarcoff
OK so the amines remove the CO2 from the boiler fumes, these amines are then heated presumably for reuse, to release the CO2. Then what? you still have CO2.
This sounds like one of those scam add on devices to increase a car’s mileage per gallon only to find it uses more gas to work. But you have paid your money and the company has gone.
Brilliant! Lets run the world out of limited coal resources 33% earlier, and bring about the greatest loss of human life ever seen 25% faster! Yay! /environmentalistmode
As an engineer, it’s stupid & wasteful to remove plant-fertilizer from power plant emissions, no matter how clever the design is.
Agesilaus says:
June 29, 2013 at 7:52 am
I was in air ASW, P-3 & S-3’s, but I was able to get an honorary crewmen aboard George Washington. Spent a week aboard during a crew change out of Holy Loch. Cross deck training they used to call it.
Carbon dioxide is an odorless, tasteless, transparent, harmless gas (even at over 10 times the present level http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Carboniferous_climate.html), is not a pollutant (contrary to the decision of our technologically incompetent SCOTUS) and is absolutely necessary for all visible life on earth. The slight increase to the current still-impoverished atmospheric carbon dioxide level has increased food production and caused a general greening of the planet. Sequestering it is profoundly ignorant.
A simple equation at http://climatechange90.blogspot.com/2013/05/natural-climate-change-has-been.html calculates average global temperatures since they have been accurately measured world wide (about 1895) with an accuracy of 90%, irrespective of whether the influence of CO2 is included or not. The equation uses a single external forcing, a proxy that is the time-integral of sunspot numbers. A graph in that paper, shows the calculated temperature anomaly trajectory overlaid on measurements.
‘The End of Global Warming’ at http://endofgw.blogspot.com/ expands recent (since 1996) temperature anomaly measurements by the five reporting agencies and includes a graph showing the growing separation between the rising CO2 and not-rising average global temperature.
It’s not possible to drive from Colorado Springs to Denver without passing at least one mile long coal train supplying energy to the Front Range . Other than a few percent ash and SO2 , etc which are well worth the scrubbing , ALL of that coal becomes CO2 .
The idea that you are going to remove all of that from the exhaust leaving just the N2 , surplus O2 , and Ar is nuts .
There is apparently some market for CO2 for oil well injection , but that would be quickly saturated with just a few power plants . Using the CO2 and waste heat to grow algae or other biomass might make economic sense . But , of course , it is already demonstrably greening the planet on a global basis as a collateral bene .
What you need to understand about greens is their real objective being “forced global deindustrialization” – meaning no power plants, period. Add to that a forced top global population of well less than one billion people. They want to do this with the UN and Agenda 21 as a start. The only response to their madness must be uncompromising resistance.
Please note that each kilowatt-hour of power used to regenerate the amine results in the emission of approximately 2 pounds of CO2 or 1 ton per megawatt hour that has to be scrubbed out. In addition, more advanced amines currently under demonstration (they have graduated from the lab bench) in actual power plants have achieved greater efficiencies, more in low 20’s. The 40% number is from the first generation of amines (MEA) and also includes power for compression, transportation and injection of the CO2.
To a power plant owner, even 25% is a hell of a cut to take from the output of a power plant. “Plug-and-play” my Aunt Fannie.
I have been intrigued by the giant hydroponic greenhouses the Dutch invented – the type measured in square kilometres rather than square metres! They usually add CO2 to help the plants grow.
With a power station the low grade heat could be used to heat them, electricity could be used to power UV lamps for 24 hour operation, and the power station exhaust could be passed through a series of greenhouses until the CO2 is absorbed. The first stage could be sunflowers which also absorb heavy metals and other pollutants. These could be used as biofuel. The other greenhouses could produce food or other types of biofuel.
Being hydroponic and self contained means the soil quality of the land is irrelevant. One area of Spain with very poor soil quality now produces salad vegetables for most of Europe. Not sure how the economics stack up but I would rather billions be wasted on these than some clumsy and wasteful chemical process.
For those sueing the EPA about CO2 being classed as a toxic pollutant :
It would be interesting to grow four identical plants with varying CO2 levels, possibly using hydroponic techniques so all factors can be accurately measured. I would suggest zero CO2, 200 ppm, 400 ppm and 800 ppm. The experiment should also measure drought resistence.
I have an idea of how the results would turn out but would be interested in exactly what happens. At last we would have an accurate measurement of CO2 toxicity to plants rather than just made-up ‘science’.
Sherwood Idso made this brilliant graphic of living pine trees long ago in AGW fraud years : http://cosy.com/Science/BuildingBlockOfLifeSlide.jpg .
“As with the conventional thermal-amine scrubber systems, this technology should be capable of removing 90 percent of CO2 from a plant’s emissions, the researchers say. But while the conventional CO2-capture process uses about 40 percent of a plant’s power output, the new system would consume only about 25 percent of the power, making it more attractive.”
That’s considered good. 25% less product out of the same inputs. That’s not just stupid, it’s “do Darwin a favor and shoot yourself in the f’ing face” stupid.
25% more coal burned for the same product… How does that reduce pollution?