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In a separate, unpublished and preliminary economic analysis, the scientists argue that the “energy penalty” would raise electricity costs by about a quarter but also reap huge societal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.
howarth says:
August 28, 2012 at 8:16 am
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.
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If you are rich, you are only rich so long as everyone else is poor. If everyone else is also rich, then you are as poor as everyone else.
This logic is what drives those at the top to deprive everyone else. It isn’t enough that they are rich, they need everyone else to remain poor.
A 25% reduction in efficiency means a 33% increase in fuel consumption to achieve the same net energy output coupled with a 33% increase in coal burning capacity. Another slight of hand by the warmist fraternity!
For those who asked about asthma, it is an inflammatory disease (as is cardiovascular disease… just keep that in mind). The speculation that I remember about the increasing incidence of asthma is that as infectious disease deaths dropped, the survivor effects and that the immune system isn’t getting primed to fight those old pathogens means the immune system is getting primed against itself more. Sure it was and is easier to blame pollution but, until you show me the actual concentrations of actual chemicals measured in actual people, I will remain skeptical of pollution being a problem after 1980. You could freeze the emission standards to those in 1992 and you would not be able to tell the difference in terms of clinical disease, outside of smoking or directly breathing smoke from cooking using wood, dung, or other solids.
What are they smoking up there??
This is so insanely idiotic I cannot believe anyone even tried to peddle it as a useful idea.
The energy losses at each step of this imaginary process would eat up the entire output of the plant. You would be better off burning money to get heat.
Larry
How come no one ever mentions the fact that a leak/rupture is a death sentence for anyone, human or animal in the area of the storage facilities.
I rather let the plant life take care of the CO2.
“Save a tree, burn coal”
“Today we recognize that carbon dioxide emissions are a leading contributor to climate-warming factors attributed to humans,” Donnelly said.
But no mention of the fact that all these “climate-warming factors attributed (mostly for propaganda purposes, of course – SC) to humans” added together are still way down on the ‘noise’ of natural climatic variability. Sigh. ND – SOS.
Very similar to what Alstrom and Wisconsin Electric did at Pleasant Prairie units 1 and 2. They used super chilled ammonia and got similiar responses a few years ago. Good timing, good applications and good response to shut the green weenies up. Go for it.
The big technical problem in crygenically cooling the exhaust of an unscrubbed coal boiler is the condensation of acids, primarily sulfuric from the SO3 and water in the flue gas. It eventually eats the hell out of anything it touches, even exotic metal alloys. That is why boilers are designed to run just above the acid dew point. Boiler operators would love to operate below the water dew point so all of the heat of evaporation could be recovered, but it is just too expensive. Wet scrubbers have the same problem in the area where the hot flue gas mixes with cooler scrubber water and quenches the gas. Natural gas plants do not have the acids, however, and they do run below the water dew point, making them highly efficient. So your heat exchange surfaces will have to kept clean (H/T, PRD), corrosion free and then you will have to remove the solidified water ice and CO2 in some fashion from the surfaces in way that keeps the frozen solids from insulating them. Better consult some engineers before you spend a bundle on something that becomes swiss cheese in a couple of years.
Problem Solved
It’s really quite ingenious, what they didn’t tell us is they sell the CO2 to the oil companies for their fracking operations. That’s because they’d be the only ones who could afford to pay for the stuff.
In the late 1960s the environmental hysterics demanded that we move from coal to oil… right before the OPEC embargo.
We already had “bag filters” capable of removing sub-micron diameter particles. Lime “scrubbers” were already being deployed to neutralize acids. Natural gas “jet engine” peaking units were in use.
But no such measures will ever placate the environmental whackoes, because what they really hate is human activity.
Matthew Carver says:
August 28, 2012 at 12:32 am
This could never work, the only proven way to reduce emissions and therefore save the planet is by taking money from people or groups we don’t like and giving it to people or groups we do like.
——————–
Wrong Matt.
They do take money from people they don’t like but, they give it to people who don’t like us.
cn
A 2005 report discussed economics and efficiencies for the lowest cost CO2 removal technologies. Cryogenics is considered too energy-intensive and costly. The numbers are better than what can be expected for a cryogenic solution.
http://www.undeerc.org/PCOR/newsandpubs/pdf/CarbonSeparationCapture.pdf
For CO2 capture in a typical lignite-fired power plant, with either Amine process or Oxygen combustion to remove CO2:
-the net thermal efficiency drops from 33% to 23.5% or 21.2%.
-cost of producing electricity increases from 2 to 2.5 or 3.3 cents/kWhr.
-CO2 capture cost is $23.20 or $31.6 per ton CO2.
-Carbon capture cost is $85.15 or $116 per ton Carbon.
-Capture costs are driven by construction costs, and those costs have gone way up since 2005.
Cryogenic separation of gases has been around a very long time, even for CO2. There are no technology hurdles. The important issues are economic (capital outlay and O&M costs, as discussed in other posts above).
In other words, there is no interesting physics, but lots of challenging engineering problems.
michaeljmcfadden says:
August 28, 2012 at 12:28 am
” What will they eventually DO with all that deadly carbon dioxide?? Use it to make seltzer water to create highballs to get the angels drunk for their pin dancing??? After all, it’s worse than plutonium you realize. Plutonium has a half-life. We can store it up for a little while and then it becomes safe and we can let it out. But carbon dioxide will retain its deadliness for all of eternity!
–Well Michael, you should call yourself Chicken Little, for this unscientific nonsense and hysteria.
Carbon more deadly than plutonium?? Where did you go to school? Bizzarro World? It’s past time you and the other hysterics did some reading and learned what science is before you start screaming what Richard Feynman called ‘not even wrong’ nonsense. Carbon is an essential trace gas, without which you wouldn’t be sitting at your laptop spewing hot air.
Taking the “heat” out of the generator exhausts (cryogenically, even!), according to the Laws of Thermodynamics, will require far more energy that the generators can produce. Thus one would need another generator to power the refrigerator, which would need another refrigerator for *its* exhausts, and so ad infinitum.
In re disposal of captured (and concentrated) pollutants; what about the ~1 ppm radioactive nuclides, or is it 1 ppb? To a Greenie, a ton of radioactive material will be an insurmountable obstacle.
Dilution is the solution to pollution caused by concentration of naturally occurring materials.
Ferdberple, the wierd thing is that we pay ALOT of money to buy the C02 that we inject. Seems wierd to pay out the wazoo for something so useless. We do, however come out ahead since it allows us to continue to extract oil from the formation. You’d think the “warmistas” would cut us some slack for getting rid of the C02 for them, and in turn, create very very little C02 with our very efficient and clean processes, but we are still very heavily regulated by OSHA, DOT, BLM, and the EPA. This is an old field, and 20 or so years ago it was nearly dead. By flooding it with C02 and water, the field was revived and allowed our oil gas industry as well as our community to continue to thrive. I don’t intend to debate you over big oil wanting a carbon tax, but since transporting and storing C02 was brought up, I thought I’d provide a working example of exactly how it can be done. I also wanted to illustrate that If someone wanted to capture and condense C02 from plant emissions, it can be actually used for other purposes effectively and safely rather than just stored. But, I wouldn’t advocate that unless Big Brother left us no choice. Just trying to turn a huge negative into positive down the line. Also, we’re not really “big oil” either. We’re one of the little guys that comes in and gets what the big boys left behind when the fields are no longer worth their effort. The custodians of Big Oil, if you will. For a healthy profit of course 😉
@Robert of Ottawa
“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.”
>Show us the bodies.
+++++++
Didn’t you see the hundreds of bodies lined up each year at the Toronto morgue killed by the emissions from the Nanticoke coal fired power plant? Wasn’t it claimed that 1600 deaths per year were attributable to that one distant plant? Probably not – what with all that smoke drifting over the Centre of the Universe.
Now what about those 18,000 definitely dead and (46,000 – 18,000) = 28,000 who are possibly/maybe/not sure they are dead? Is that where they get all those people for the ‘living dead’ movies that infect my TV these days? They all look like they have been breathing coal smoke but some spoiler told me that as make-up.
No wonder I can’t get service at the emergency ward of an Ontario hospital! They are too busy dealing with a million asthma attacks from that damned coal plant. They should ban asthma and turn up the aircon. We’ll all feel better.
I note that the Germans plan to have enough electricity for their hospitals. Twenty-three new coal-fired plants. Impressive.
/sarc where appropriate
With available chemical processes, approximately, 5 to 6 pounds of carbon (i.e., coked coal) + 8 pounds of methane (natural gas) = 13 to 14 pounds of nearly any liquid hydrocarbon you desire. The coking process allows essentially complete control of non-carbon volatiles and heavy contaminants. And if you can’t get methane, you can make it by other reactions, using carbon and water as feedstocks. The problem has nothing to do with chemical power generation. It has everything to do with climatological Lysenkoism.
Tell any coal-fired plant operator that you can reduce the amount of CO2, SOx, and NOx in emissions and their first questions are: 1) What is the capital cost, 2) what is the maintenance cost, and 3) what is the parasitic load. If the technology is going to have a 25% impact on efficiency combined with high capital and/or maintenance costs, the operator will send you on your way. Coal gasification can already do what this cryogenic cleanup is proposing. Unfortunately, coal gasification comes at a high capital cost and a high parasitic cost due to the need for oxygen and the need to compress CO2 for pipeline transportation.
Obvious answer — build coal-fired plants at the bottom of glaciers, pump the exhaust into the base.
/sarc (well, duh)
DavidG, you wrote, “–Well Michael, you should call yourself Chicken Little, for this unscientific nonsense and hysteria. Carbon more deadly than plutonium?? Where did you go to school? Bizzarro World? It’s past time you and the other hysterics did some reading and learned what science is before you start screaming what Richard Feynman called ‘not even wrong’ nonsense. Carbon is an essential trace gas, without which you wouldn’t be sitting at your laptop spewing hot air.”
David, I was being HIGHLY sarcastic/satirical in my posting to make the point (note the angels tap-dancing on the pinhead.) I’m pretty well-known around the net on blogs/newsboards dealing with second- and third-hand smoke nonsense for taking the craziness that underlies the hysteria and exposing it more clearly for BEING craziness. See http://www.Antibrains.com for background. In this case I was poking fun at the idea that they were taking carbon dioxide and treating it as if it WERE something like plutonium — something that needed to be stored safely away in “dedicated storage facilities” because of its “deadliness.”
Heh, of course I shouldn’t overlook the possibility that you yourself were being sarcastic/satirical in your response of treating the nonsense about the nonsense as though it were serious. In which case, please take my seemingly serious response here as simply being “thirdhand nonsense” — more deadly than oxygen! (Which actually I believe may kill you rather dead in a day or so if it’s all you have to breathe… Maybe we need storage facilities for that as well?)
And then of course, there’s always the small possibility that this entire thread has been based upon a story/study that in itself was nothing more than a mis-timed April Fools joke and the original author/researchers are sitting back in their chairs laughing their heads off that we’ve all taken them seriously!
– MJM
dave ward says:
“The new journal article does not address construction costs or the disposal of the captured pollutants”
There’s always a catch…
And typically more than one. Note that they say:
“Not in the equation, Donnelly said, are the front-end health-care costs involved in coal extraction through mining.”
So, they claim a ‘health care benefit to society’ based on imaginary impacts of diffused stack gasses, but conveniently don’t count the very real and quatifyable health impacts to society of having to mine and transport 33% more coal for the same energy output.
Greenie math: every case of asthma counts against coal, no case of black lung does.
This is from the University of Oregon and the only reality about that place is the football team. Since their ex coach draws a $500,000/year PERS retirement it lessons the reality of football also.
“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.”
And what are the health BENEFITS of using electricity created by burning coal? It doubles your life expectancy, and makes it far more pleasant, among other things.
Some speculation on the rise of Asthma.
I was taught some time back that one strong link to asthma was stress and associated emotional influences. I was in a position to watch change in a Western nation versus an Asian nation over 20 years. In the Western nation asthma rose and in the Asian one it didn’t. In the Asian nation the education system, parental attitudes, play patterns and the legal system barely changed. In the Western nation the education system changed, parental attitudes changes, play patterns changed and the legal system changed into one where personal responsibility was abdicated in favour of blaming others. ADHD suddenly appeared (but not in psychological texts) and parents started apportioning all manner of issues on society to be solved by taking a pill.
Based on this I offer the following theory. Cases of asthma have been rising due to a increases in manufactured “stress” along with lots of “it’s not your fault it’s ” and the tendency to treat any emotional issue (in the West) as a condition that can be handled with a pill or in this case an inhaler.
It might be an interesting one for some budding PHD student to take on perhaps.