From the University of Oregon a wacky idea to refrigerate smokestacks.
Cooled coal emissions would clean air and lower health and climate-change costs
EUGENE, Ore. — (Aug. 27, 2012) — Refrigerating coal-plant emissions would reduce levels of dangerous chemicals that pour into the air — including carbon dioxide by more than 90 percent — at a cost of 25 percent efficiency, according to a simple math-driven formula designed by a team of University of Oregon physicists.
The computations for such a system, prepared on an electronic spreadsheet, appeared in Physical Review E, a journal of the American Physical Society.
In a separate, unpublished and preliminary economic analysis, the scientists argue that the “energy penalty” would raise electricity costs by about a quarter but also reap huge societal benefits through subsequent reductions of health-care and climate-change costs associated with burning coal. An energy penalty is the reduction of electricity available for sale to consumers if plants used the same amounts of coal to maintain electrical output while using a cryogenic cleanup.
“The cryogenic treatment of flue gasses from pulverized coal plant is possible, and I think affordable, especially with respect to the total societal costs of burning coal,” said UO physicist Russell J. Donnelly, whose research team was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy for the work detailed in the published journal article.
“In the U.S., we have about 1,400 electric-generating unit powered by coal, operated at about 600 power plants,” Donnelly said. That energy, he added, is sold at about 5.6 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to a 2006 Congressional Budget Office estimate. “The estimated health costs of burning coal in the U.S. are in the range of $150 billion to $380 billion, including 18,000-46,000 premature deaths, 540,000 asthma attacks, 13,000 emergency room visits and two million missed work or school days each year.”
In their separate economic analysis, Donnelly and UO research assistant Robert E. Hershberger, also a co-author on the journal paper, estimate that implementing large-scale cryogenic systems into coal-fired plants would reduce overall costs to society by 38 percent through the sharp reduction of associated health-care and climate-change costs. Not in the equation, Donnelly said, are the front-end health-care costs involved in coal extraction through mining.
The cryogenic concept is not new. Donnelly experimented briefly in the 1960s with a paper mill in Springfield, Ore., to successfully remove odor-causing gasses filling the area around the plant using cryogenics. Subsequently the National Science Foundation funded a major study to capture sulfur dioxide emissions — a contributor to acid rain — from coal burning plants. The grant included a detailed engineering study by the Bechtel Corp. of San Francisco.
The Bechtel study showed that the cryogenic process would work very well, but noted that large quantities of carbon dioxide also would be condensed, a consequence that raised no concerns in 1978. “Today we recognize that carbon dioxide emissions are a leading contributor to climate-warming factors attributed to humans,” Donnelly said.
Out came his previously published work on this concept, followed by a rigorous two-year project to recheck and update his thermodynamic calculations and compose “a spreadsheet-accessible” formula for potential use by industry. His earlier work on the cryogenic treatment of coal-plant emissions and natural gas sources had sparked widespread interest internationally.
While the required cooling machinery would be large — potentially the size of a football stadium — the cost for construction or retrofitting likely would not be dramatically larger than present systems that include scrubbers, which would no longer be necessary, Donnelly said. The new journal article does not address construction costs or the disposal of the captured pollutants, the latter of which would be dependent on engineering and perhaps geological considerations.
According to the Physical Review E paper, carbon dioxide would be captured in its solid phase, then warmed and compressed into a gas that could be moved by pipeline at near ambient temperatures to dedicated storage facilities that could be hundreds of miles away. Other chemicals such as sulfur dioxide, some nitrogen oxides and mercury also would be condensed and safely removed from the exhaust stream of the plants.
Last December the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued new mercury and air toxic standards (MATS), calling for the trapping of 41 percent of sulfur dioxide and 90 percent of mercury emissions. A cryogenic system would do better based on the conservatively produced computations by Donnelly’s team — capturing at least 98 percent of sulfur dioxide, virtually 100 percent of mercury and, in addition, 90 percent of carbon dioxide.
“This forward-thinking formula and the preliminary analysis by these researchers offer some exciting possibilities for the electric power industry that could ultimately benefit human health and the environment,” said Kimberly Andrews Espy, UO vice president for research and innovation. “Scientists at the University of Oregon are continuing to develop new ideas and advanced materials to foster a sustainable future for our planet and its people.”
Co-authors with Donnelly and Hershberger on the journal article were: Charles E. Swanson, who earned his doctorate in physics from the UO and served as postdoctoral researcher under Donnelly; John W. Elzey, a former research associate in Donnelly’s Cryogenic Helium Turbulence Lab and now a scientist at GoNano Technologies in Moscow, Idaho; and John Pfotenhauer, who earned his doctorate at the UO and now is in the mechanical engineering department at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Mark Nutley says:
And the CO2 can be sold on to anyone with a greenhouse, pretty cool really.
Probably easier to build greenhouses on site. Then a simple pipe will do the job. No need to freeze or bottle the gas.
Just saw a crazy movie 4:44. It’s a lefty-luny enviro whack movie, their suicidal wet-dream. It exposes their twisted psychology. It’s much worse than the 10:10 commercial.
http://youtu.be/A-1Q7EevCy8
At 1:24, you get a clue – Al Gore. Yep, turns out Uncle Al was right, it was – get this – the ozone layer. The whole world ends at 4:44 am EST, within a few seconds.
I’d like to make the movie 4:45, where all these goofballs like Gore are exposed as frauds. Their enviro-mania is a religion to them. The movie makes that clear too. We might call it the Church of Whack (COW).
Fascinating. On this line of thought, you could presumably run regular atmosphere though the same process and reduce our CO2 as desired. And cryogenics for your car engine, and cryogenics for your gas water heater, and … But what you would do with the stuff, I have no idea. Keep it stored at cryogenic temperatures? Sure, that sounds OK.
keith at hastings uk says:
August 28, 2012 at 4:18 am
Much cheaper to gradually retire the coal plants and move to fracked gas?
As for asthma, lots in the UK but very little coal is burnt. Possibly oversensitive immune responses following excessive cleanliness for kids ie don’t eat dirt anymore, or play outside with minimal supervision, evrything squeaky clean, so their immune systems get nothing to bite on as they grow up?
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Please don’t fall for the kids eating dirt story. As an asthmatic, there is no way I was deprived of my dirt when I was a kid . I laugh out loud when I hear this brought out time and again.
Other places where asthma prevalence is high are New Zealand and Australia. Which is a surprise to many as it is such a healthy outdoor lifestyle. If interested, check out Buteyko as a way of controlling asthma, it reduced my need for inhalers and pills etc. and it is especially useful for children. I could provide links, but would prefer you do your own research so I am not accused of self interest.
Hygiene hypothesis
The hygiene hypothesis suggests that exposure to infections, particularly in early life, stimulates the immune system to activate T-helper-1 cells, which are associated with antiviral immunity. It proposes that activation of T-helper-1 cells protects against asthma. The information provided by the ISAAC study suggests this may be a local theory, because very high rates of asthma have been observed in developing countries that have low standards of hygiene [5]. For example, in Latin America gastrointestinal parasite infestations and acute viral infections in infancy are common but do not protect against asthma. In fact, some of these countries have as high a prevalence of asthma as in the UK.
exce[r]pt above from a report at Liverpool University Alder Hey children’s hospital.
Eugene…….Lived here since 1960. I have learned one truth here in 50 years, never believe the liberals (98%) at the U of O. They are, shall we say, a little off course. And the Paper Plant never stopped stinking. …..and still stinks today – much like the University Climate Science Department.
Just think about the advertising potential. “Better living through cryogenics”
University of Oregon “physicists” – please go over to the engineering dept. and learn something about the real world. Please I beg of you, before you do yourselves some real harm. And whatever you do, don’t start experimenting with anything until you have the engineers go over your “designs” – ah – spreadsheets.
kadaka (KD Knoebel) says:
But pressurized CO₂ pipelines, where leaks could send silent invisible waves of death flowing downhill over unsuspecting people and animals? Yeah, that’ll sure be popular.
I’m sure the people around Lake Nyos can explain why this is a really bad thing.
The only kind of vehicle suitable for escape would be an electric one…
Also, for such a large commercial refrigeration setup, the refrigerant of choice would be ammonia. So you go from a nice safe steam electric plant, which at worst could have a steam-based explosion that wouldn’t hurt anything off the plant grounds, to needing a full hazmat warning system with alerts in case of an ammonia leak, ready to evacuate anyone nearby as far away as needed.
Also in the case of a carbon dioxide leak. Together with breathing apparatus for plant workers and the training to use it.
Anyway safety valves for high pressure steam have been around for over 300 years. Thus someone would have had to mess up the plant badly to get a steam explosion.
I hear Kari Norgaard prattling in the background.
Obviously, he is going after an increase in grant money, his primary objective.
It is all about the drive to scarcity, which will further the social revolution. Our scientists and engineers used to receive prizes and awards for increasing efficiency and production output. In our new improved Orwellian world order, they will receive awards for decreasing efficiency and increased artificial scarcity. I fear for our children but it has nothing to do with CO2. GK
The kooks just never stop coming…
The statistics to question in this research, and that are highly germaine to the cost/benefits calculations, are the health issues they list. My hunch is that these numbers are waaayyy over blown. They may have looked into the health issues related to mining coal as well as burning coal. But even then, I want to see the data on this list of health costs.
Burning carbon at incorrect (low) temperatures creates carbon monoxide. Why would they advocate this?
The ONLY business that can take a 25% hit in efficiency and survive is government.
Here in OK, and other places, we use compressed liquid C02 to aid in the recovery of oil. Specifically, in the facility I work in, we move the liquid C02, which is a byproduct of a fertilizer plant, via 145 mile long pipeline at a pressure of around 1500 psi, then inject that C02 into the oil bearing formations (around 7000 ft. here) using what we call injection wells. The C02 serves basically as a detergent to loosen and flush the oil out of the formation, and also to charge the field (keep pressure up) then it is recovered via producing wells which employ electric submersible pumps (ESP). Then the produced oil, natural gas (which now contains C02 in a gas state), and water is separated at several above ground facilities. The gas, which is 88% C02, has combined with the usable natural gas and is sent to a gas processing facility, where I work. We take that gas and strip the C02 from “the good stuff” and re-inject the C02 down hole. The methanes, propanes, and all the other -anes are further processed for sales. We move about 25 million cubic feet (mmscfd) of C02 each day, and have been since 1992 without any major release of C02 and without injury. We take in roughly 20-25 cubic feet of C02 everyday, 365 days a year, and none of it ever sees the light of day again. My point is that not only can the byproduct C02 be disposed of safely, it can be put to use very effectively. So, at least in my neck of the woods, the only people actually significantly reducing CO2 from entering the atmosphere is the evil oil and gas industry. If my calculations are correct, my little plant in the tiny town of Lindsay, OK keeps right about 43 million lbs. or 21,500 tons of C02 from entering the atmosphere. Just FYI.
WillR says:
August 28, 2012 at 6:20 am
I have been told (personally) by a real climate scientist that people who use spreadsheets to try to analyze climate related problems are a laughingstock “in the trade”.
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How true. We learned from Jones in the Climategate emails that real climate scientists don’t know how to use spreadsheets. Advanced tools like spreadsheets are reserved for those folks that need accuracy in their work. Climate science doesn’t rely on “accuracy”, it relies on “believability”.
Any marketing expert can tell you that when applying for money it is much more important that the numbers are believable than they are accurate. Any engineer can tell you that when building something it is much more important that the numbers are accurate than they are believable.
This is the inherent difference between cliamte science, which only needs to be believable, and engineering which needs to be accurate.
Those that can: do. Those that can’t: consult. Those that can’t consult: teach. Those that can’t teach become climate scientists.
The coal fired electrical plant in St. John, Arizona was retrofitted with scrubbers in compliance with the new EPA regulations. Its a nice clean plant that supplies energy to Arizona and California. It also supplies nice clean jobs to the people of St. John who run the plant. The coal is mined locally that also keeps people employed( in this case I believe it come from mines on the Navajo Indian reservation. ) Completely sustainable energy. But the federal government is going to shut it down anyway. Its not about how clean the coal burns. It the energy it produces they hate. Affordable energy is key to prosperity. This government seems to have a problem with prosperity. So even if they succeeded in this crazy CO2 capturing scheme, it still wouldn’t be good enough for the anti coal fanatics.
I find the discussion on toxicology below interesting. Extrapolation of high dose animal toxicology data to humans is fraught with problems. Most data is so shaky as to be unusable. Yet it is still done as if it is 100% accurate. Lovelace Respriatory Institute showed conclusively that diesel exhaust exposure at low levels does not cause histological response in lab rats. However, diesel exhaust particulate matter painted on lung tissure causes high response. So the high dose response is extrapolated to low levels is if it is vaild.
http://butane.chem.uiuc.edu/pshapley/Environmental/L37/3.html
C. Risk Assessment – the Traditional Approach
The computation of risk to human health for a given substance requires several assumptions related not only to sources of exposure and route of ingestion, but also to how mathematical modeling is applied to animal toxicity data, and how effects of biomass and body surface area should be assessed. Somewhat systematic approaches have been formalized. Dose-response data obtained from animal experiments are extrapolated, using various mathematical assumptions, to expected exposure levels to produce a (hopefully) quantitative assessment of risk. Currently, this type of risk assessment has been used largely to predict the likelihood of developing or dying from cancer.
A major unresolved issue in risk assessment is the most appropriate method of extrapolating short-term, high-dose, positive toxicity data to the much lower exposure levels to which people will be exposed. The issue is whether toxic compounds have a lower threshold of activity, a concentration below which harmful effects do not occur. For some types of hazardous compounds, such as carcinogens, it has been considered prudent to assume that there is no threshold, and to assume that a plot of the dose-hazard relationship goes straight through the origin; any measurable dose is assumed to carry with it some risk. Other kinds of toxicity data, however, often indicate a lower limit below which no physiological effects are observed. In these cases, the dose-response curve has a “hockey-stick” profile. Complications occur when dose-response data for animals are highly curvilinear, as they often are.
Another major concern is the extent to which animal toxicity data can, or should be, translated to humans, given the large differences in anatomy, physiology, and metabolism, and therefore susceptibility, of various animal species to toxicants. Furthermore, animal data are not always reproducible due to variances in experimental design and in the numbers of animals tested.
In the past, the assumption has been made that people should be considered at least as susceptible as the most susceptible animal species. Where a concentration is available in these experiments in which no observed effect is noted, a “safety” or “uncertainty” factor is then applied to the data to calculate acceptable (reduced) concentrations or intake levels to which humans can be assumed to be safely exposed. For example, one suggestion was that a safety factor of 10 be applied when there were valid results from studies of long-term ingestion by humans and no indications of carcinogenicity; a factor of 100 was recommended when no valid human data existed but there were valid studies of long-term effects on animals; and so on.
In any event, for carcinogenesis the assumption has usually been made that a “safe” level of human exposure is that in which the total lifetime exposure of a person to a compound should produce one chance in a million for developing cancer. This is essentially how drinking-water standards (for lead concentrations, e.g.) are calculated. Occasionally, however, operational or political concerns have overridden this type of computation. An example of this is the current drinking-water standard for trihalomethanes. If the traditional extrapolation method with safety factors were to be applied to the data, concentrations in the range of 1-10 ppm would be obtained; however, since such levels are not achievable with common disinfection technology, a higher standard of 100 ppm is currently on the books.
The wealth-eating monster has to be fed, or it will turn really angry!
CO2 is plant food, not a dangerous pollutant.
A 25% cost in efficiency? Justified? And then storing CO2?
Trees are the way to store CO2, then petroleum (Mother Nature’s way).
The thermodynamics of the the CO2-H2O-N2 relatively low-temperature (80C) effluent from a thermal steam plant is well know. N2 plays little role since it does not undergo a phase change. The CO2 and H2O phase diagrams(P,T) are well understood. Although not necessarily the exact mechanism proposed by the authors, the pressure, P, of the effluent can be increase by a compressor (adiabatically) to 100 atmospheres (ATM) which requires mechanical energy input. The high-T compressed effluent can then be cooled by extracting the thermal energy (either to cooling towers or to generate electricity via known low-T processes; this can recover some of the mechanical energy input). If you look at the phase diagram for the system you will realize that at first the H2O condenses out from the gaseous effluent as the temperature drops to ~250 C – remember the pressure remains constant – and be extracted. As the temperature drops further to about 60 C the CO2 condenses out, either as a liquid (or a solid if you go to higher P) depending upon where in the P-T phase diagram the system resides. At a P= 30 ATM and T= 25C the system can work quite well. The liquid H2O and CO2 are subtracted form the system while the still-gaseous N2 (etc) is vented to the air. There is nothing magical about this. It is all physics – call thermodynamics – and is taught in undergraduate physics classes. Whether this makes environmental, economic or business sense is another matter. But at least argue using some facts and knowledge.
Yeah, in retrospect, the parasitic load of 25% exceeds that of current pollution control equipment in a fully loaded coal plant.
I was distracted when posting earlier. 8 to 10 percent is real world and that includes all of the auxilliary power needs.
CO2 capture and deepwell storage is a “30 pound tick on a 10 pound dog” as has been found out by two major generators on the planet (one in the US and one in Germany). Try >30% of a plants generation used capturing the CO2 and injecting it and that scales with the capacity of the power plant.
Refrigeration: while neat in concept… if it really took 25% then that is far too expensive. If it could simply be stopped at causing the condensation of water on the various nuclei available in the stack gas and deepwell injecting what comes down…. now we’re talking. But cryo? Only the TVA would build it…
…with our taxdollars.
Andrew Lyon says:
August 28, 2012 at 8:11 am
So, at least in my neck of the woods, the only people actually significantly reducing CO2 from entering the atmosphere is the evil oil and gas industry. If my calculations are correct, my little plant in the tiny town of Lindsay, OK keeps right about 43 million lbs. or 21,500 tons of C02 from entering the atmosphere.
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Which is why the oil industry wants a price on carbon. It drives their main competitor coal out of the market, and it pays them to inject CO2 for oil recovery.
Anyone that believes that Big Oil is against a price on carbon hasn’t checked the facts. The biggest beneficiary from a carbon tax or cap and trade will be the oil industry. If you think oil prices are high now, see what happens when coal is no longer available as a fuel source.
Do the math. Thermal coal in the US is as low as $20/ton. The same energy equivalent as 2 barrels of oil, with a price of roughly $200.
How cool would the exhaust have to be? Ignoring CO2 for now and thinking only of particulates in the exhaust, I would imagine that a plant based near a lake or ocean could have its smoke stack run under that body of water long enough for the gases to cool and the particles to precipitate out. Am I out to lunch on this?
A 25% reduction in output will require replacing that with more generators thus reducing the efficiency further. Wind and solar could be added but those require subsidies and auxiliary full-time backup, reducing efficiency further yet. It would be most efficient if they just turned off 25% of the generators and built the needed replacements.