From James Hansen’s, Bill McKibben’s and Joe Romm’s worst nightmare department, comes this uplifting science story from the Ohio State University. Basically they found a way to oxidize coal and extract energy without releasing any CO2.
When a team of Ohio State students worked around the clock for nine days straight recently, they weren’t pulling the typical college “all-nighters.”
Instead, they were reaching a milestone in clean coal technology.
For 203 continuous hours, they operated a scaled-down version of a power plant combustion system with a unique experimental design–one that chemically converts coal to heat while capturing 99 percent of the carbon dioxide produced in the reaction.
This new technology, called coal-direct chemical looping, was pioneered by Liang-Shih Fan, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and director of Ohio State’s Clean Coal Research Laboratory. (Fan is a Distinguished University Professor and a 2012 Innovator of the Year.)
Typical coal-fired power plants burn coal to heat water to make steam, which turns the turbines that produce electricity. In chemical looping, the coal isn’t burned with fire, but instead chemically combusted in a sealed chamber so that it doesn’t pollute the air. A second combustion unit in the lab does the same thing with coal-derived syngas, and both produce 25 thermal kilowatts of energy.
“In the simplest sense, combustion is a chemical reaction that consumes oxygen and produces heat,” Fan says. “Unfortunately, it also produces carbon dioxide, which is difficult to capture and bad for the environment. So we found a way to release the heat without burning.”
Dawei Wang, a research associate and one of the group’s team leaders, says the technology’s potential benefits go beyond the environment: “The plant could really promote our energy independence. Not only can we use America’s natural resources such as Ohio coal, but we can keep our air clean and spur the economy with jobs.”
The researchers are about to take the technology to the next level: a pilot plant is under construction at the U.S. Department of Energy‘s National Carbon Capture Center. Set to begin operations in late 2013, that plant will produce 250 thermal kilowatts using syngas. Tests there will set the stage for future commercial development.
“At Ohio State, with a team of creative minds, we can take a technological concept closer to real commercial use,” Wang says.
The technology looks promising: as doctoral student Elena Chung explained, the 203-hour experiment could have continued even longer.
“We voluntarily chose to stop the unit. Honestly, it was a mutual decision by Dr. Fan and the students. It was a long and tiring week where we all shared shifts,” she says.
Fan’s students were thrilled to be involved in this breakthrough, even if they did lose some sleep.
“Ohio State has been very supportive of our research efforts,” Fan says. The result of the university’s backing? A place, he says, where “brilliant invention and cutting-edge research can be successful and progressive.”
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From: New Coal Technology Harnesses Energy Without Burning, Nears Pilot-Scale Development
“In the simplest sense, combustion is a chemical reaction that consumes oxygen and produces heat,” Fan said. “Unfortunately, it also produces carbon dioxide, which is difficult to capture and bad for the environment. So we found a way to release the heat without burning. We carefully control the chemical reaction so that the coal never burns—it is consumed chemically, and the carbon dioxide is entirely contained inside the reactor.”
Dawei Wang, a research associate and one of the group’s team leaders, described the technology’s potential benefits. “The commercial-scale CDCL plant could really promote our energy independence. Not only can we use America’s natural resources such as Ohio coal, but we can keep our air clean and spur the economy with jobs,” he said.
“We carefully control the chemical reaction so that the coal never burns—it is consumed chemically, and the carbon dioxide is entirely contained inside the reactor.” |
Though other laboratories around the world are trying to develop similar technology to directly convert coal to electricity, Fan’s lab is unique in the way it processes fossil fuels. The Ohio State group typically studies coal in the two forms that are already commonly available to the power industry: crushed coal “feedstock,” and coal-derived syngas.
The latter fuel has been successfully studied in a second sub-pilot research-scale unit, through a similar process called Syngas Chemical Looping (SCL). Both units are located in a building on Ohio State’s Columbus campus, and each is contained in a 25-foot-high insulated metal cylinder that resembles a very tall home water heater tank.
No other lab has continuously operated a coal-direct chemical looping unit as long as the Ohio State lab did last September. But as doctoral student Elena Chung explained, the experiment could have continued.
“We voluntarily chose to stop the unit. We actually could have run longer, but honestly, it was a mutual decision by Dr. Fan and the students. It was a long and tiring week where we all shared shifts,” she said.
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Joe Romm of course can’t yet bring himself to carry this story over at Climate Progress, but Fox News used an old quote from one of CP’s nuttiest professors, yes our old friend Donald Brown, who says:
“Claiming that coal is clean because it could be clean — if a new technically unproven and economically dubious technology might be adopted — is like someone claiming that belladonna is not poisonous because there is a new unproven safe pill under development,” wrote Donald Brown at liberal think tank Climate Progress.
Heh. Read more here: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/02/20/coal-cleanest-energy-source-there-is/
Rational people would of course embrace such news positively. But of course, we aren’t dealing with rational people at Climate Progress, or at 350.org, so I don’t expect them or James Hansen to be happy about this development.
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The need is to convert the coal to something more valuable. Coal is not now competitive with gas for producing electricity. I fail to see how doing a loop-de-loop will provide cheaper energy. Why would an investor owned utility be interested? As others have mentioned there isn’t a CO2 problem so this isn’t a solution to anything. Only government subsidies will get a full scale plant of this type built.
Interesting they’d say:
yet “burning” is “combustion” which is a “chemical reaction” (oxidation), i.e, “it is consumed chemically”. Methinks they’re stretching definitions to make a point but simply look silly instead.
Fire involves a chemical reaction.
It would have been considerably more informative to have a comparison of the effective energy extracted per tonne of coal compared to conventional steam generation.
Pumping CO2 in the ground is fine as long as it’s not anywhere near where I live. I heard about a lake in Africa with a bed of CO2 that was released in an earth quake, CO2 is heavier than air so it “flowed” down a hill and suffocated a whole village instantly. Can they assure me the same thing won’t happen at a CO2 sequestering site ??? I don’t think so.
OK, I worked through their process and it is truly brilliant.
A conventional coal burning process works by taking oxygen out of the atmosphere, combining it with carbon. The releases energy and CO2.
What these guys are doing is completely different. What they are doing is taking oxygen out of the atmosphere, temporarily storing it on iron pellets, then combining it with carbon. This releases energy and CO2 (which is temporarily stored.
I’m certain everyone sees the difference.
But that’s not the genius part. The genius part is convincing government officials that they are not “burning” the coal and to pour money into it. The Wizard of Oz had the decency to demand that nobody look behind the curtain. These guys have the curtain pulled completely open and are just telling you not to believe your own eyes.
Not burning the coal. LOL. Where do you get the application forms to the DOE? I gotta take a crack at this…
The yin and the yang……………….
Strip the heathen-devil polluting climate security blanket out of the late Holocene atmosphere
or……..
Because it just might be the heathen-devil gas it is made out to be, stuff as many tonnes of it up there on the 5 out of the last 6 interglacial chance that it turns out to actually be the late Holocene atmosphere.
Decisionz, Decisionz…………..
Usually when people tout that they have “invented a new energy source” or a new energy recovery process they tout the efficiency. Those numbers appear to be missing. Except… that the standard seems to be that it must make energy no more than 35% more expensive. Tough “standard”.
The second issue is that of sequestering Co2 — I note that other people have pointed out the releasing more CO2 will “green the Earth” — as it will. Enough said. Just because it is true does not mean it will penetrate the consciousness of our current crop of science workers.
My final point is that all real climate scientists and real energy scientists should be required to retrain on the carbon cycle before one of them is allowed to cause serious damage. As I recall some of my old science teachers from the 50’s and 60’s had a grasp on the subject — I’ll see if I can dig up the names… As I further recall most of them had high school science plus teachers college — not even a BSc — what does this say about modern “higher” education? Me, my opinion? I dunno. Maybe you have some thoughts.
Why not let LazyTeenager and EricGrismrud represent their failed advocacy, blacklisting people just makes them able to claim censorship, though we know SkS and RC are considerably greater offenders in this regard. We’re all reasonably intelligent enough people here to read through their polluted exhortations, aren’t we?
REPLY: If it were only that simple. Please read my policy page under the header menu. Both of these people have crossed the line from simply being wrong, to doing and saying things that have crossed the line of decency. I simply don’t want them to be in my “home on the Internet” any longer. I have been quite tolerant, and each of these commenters has had several hundred comments here. But, when they cross lines of decency, I’m not obligated to take abuse in my own home. – Anthony
[Reply #2: You have not read Eric Grimsrud’s thoroughly despicable comments, which were deleted before thy were posted. He is truly a horrible human being, and Anthony went out of his way to accommodate Mr Grimsrud. [— From one of Anthony’s long term moderators.]
Regarding Lazy T, Anthony has finally had his fill: “OK that’s it, you are banned, permanently. Get the hell off my blog. I won’t tolerate this sort of hateful crap from you anymore. Mr. Rothwell.” – Anthony Watts. Sometimes a line is crossed, and action must be taken. This is not censorship, this is housekeeping. — mod.]
Here is just an idea for the unused CO2. Build Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactors (LFTR) next to these new coal-fired power plants and use the 900C waste heat from the LFTRs to synthesize CO2 + H20 to make jet fuel.
If the plant happens to be near the ocean, any remaining LFTR waste heat after the jet fuel synthesis could be used to desalinate ocean water….
LFTRs can be built real small as no containment domes or water cooling towers are required as they don’t run on pressurized steam. The liquid salts in LFTRs reach 1,600C at single atmospheric pressure, which is used to heat up Helium gas in a heat exchanger to run gas turbines and generate electricity.
There is still 900C of “waste heat” available after electrical generation to do whatever you like….
Cool technology.
Dear DOE,
I would like to apply for a $100 million grant to build a pilot project power plant using hydrogen as a fuel. The process works by combining hydrogen gas with oxygen. This releases energy that can be used just like it is in a coal fired power plant to create electricity. The only byproduct is water. No deadly carbon dioxide is produced at all.
At this point the energy required to create the hydrogen fuel is larger than what we are able to capture from the power generation process. That is why we need $100 million. We need to build large scale versions of the system which has been proven conclusively to work in the lab. By building larger scale systems, it should be possible to improve the efficiency of the hydrogen fuel creation process, and the power capture process to the point that it is commercially viable.
Actually, time is of the essence, you should probably send $100 billion so we can achieve our goals faster.
davidmhoffer says:
February 20, 2013 at 10:13 pm
Yeah, I was kind of wondering how one would heat the iron oxide and coal to a high temperature and say they were not “burning” the stuff.
Anthropogenic sources of CO2 constitute a climatically insignificant part of all CO2 sources. Approx 97% of CO2 released into the atmosphere is natural, the tiny remainder is due to hydrocarbon fuel burning. The continuously rising atmospheric CO2 increase during the last decades is due to CO2 outgassing from the oceans according to recently released, peer-reviewed scientific reports. This proves the futility of all carbon-capture AND sequestration technologies that are being touted about but proving impossible to carry out.
This new development, if I understand it correctly, does not release free CO2 but this remains sequestered within the mother fuel, in this case coal, and therefore can be disposed of without releasing that ‘harmful’ gas into the atmosphere. If this is economically viable, then it destroys the raison d’etre of all anti-carbon militants and these should now go back home and take care of their families and be happy for the rest of their lives. However, the truth is that these militants’ scope of war is not to stop anthropogenic CO2 release into the atmosphere, but to reverse humanity’s 300 year progress and put us back into the age of windmills and donkey power.
So let this useless technology develop, thus putting the humanity-hating militants in a quandry, and giving the coal workers in Ohio the rest of the world a new hope of at least keeping the present standard of living until such time that the world realises that CO2 gas is what keeps carbon-based life going on this carbon-rich planet.
I hear you Anthony, thanks for the reply. I have read many of their hundreds of comments and probably missed some of the more glaring examples, though one might guess it was an overt fondness for the D-word that got them their just reward. Perused grismrud’s site for a bit, lots of smug, little substance, and many uses of the aforementioned epithet.
REPLY: Most of the glaring examples never made it to prime time because they violated site policy, but I unfortunately was tasked with reading them. – Anthony
Lots of devices use chemical reactions to chemically alter hydrocarbons: solid oxide fuel cells or a Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel Cell with a steam reformer do this as well. Conceptually the fuel cell has been around for 230 years or so.
Perhaps this scenario sounds familliar to WUWT faithful:
You will spend the next few days, explaining to the liberal elite around the office, that this is not diltihium crystal technology from Star Trek, that thermal KW still needs to be converted to steam to drive a turbine (30-37% efficient) to make electricity, and that pipelines are really expensive for sequestration.
Since it is no use to challenge their religious beliefs on CO2 and CAGW, You will instead try to explain that the same liberal elite won’t let folks permit or construct pipelines for sequestration.
And finally, the Irony(oxide) along with the carbon dioxide, escapes them.
Did I get it it right?
Overhyped and poorly described. The coal is still oxidised to produce CO2. There is no free lunch.
The difference here is that this happens in a two step process. Essentially the oxygen is conveyed to the coal via a Ferric oxide molecule. The Fe2O3 gives up O2 to the carbon becoming FeO. In the second stage of the process the FeO is converted back to Fe2O3 by basically burning it in air at very high temperature
This two step process is less efficient than simply burning the coal. The only advantage is that the CO2 can be efficiently extracted this way. If you simply burn coal the CO2 ends up mixed with the nitrogen and the unburned oxygen. If you wanted to sequester the CO2 you would have to separate it first which takes considerable energy. In this process the CO2 comes out already separated.
The big question then is what they plan to do with the CO2. If you just released it you’d be better off to simply burn the coal which is more efficient. The only reason for using this process would be if you planned to sequester the CO2. The usual suggestion is to inject it into the ground. It takes energy to pump it deep down there further lowering the overall efficiency and requiring even more coal to be burned to generate the same amount of energy.
Injecting CO2 into the ground is also environmentally risky. If the CO2 ever got up into the ground water (and a gas has a much greater chance of getting up there than for example the liquid used in fracking) it would form carbonic acid – soda water – which isn’t harmful by itself. Unfortunately carbonic acid can dissolve minerals out of the surrounding rock. Minerals like arsenic that you would really prefer to stay put. You could end up with a frothy toxic mess bubbling up out of the ground some time down the track.
It astonishes me that people who oppose fracking on largely spurious environmental grounds seem to have no problem with carbon sequestration, which in my opinion is much more likely to pose a danger to the environment.
PeterGeorge said:
February 20, 2013 at 7:21 pm
We still don’t have a major program to get good at sequestering CO2.
——————————————-
Good – I hope we never do. I hope the insanity never becomes that advanced.
Shame on us if it does.
RockyRoad says:
February 20, 2013 at 9:52 pm
Interesting they’d say:
the coal never burns—it is consumed chemically
+++++++
I agree with you. I am burning calories at about the rate that I consume them, when averaged over time (my weight has remained constant +/- 10 pounds since high school.) I produce solid, liquid and gaseous waste… and I also produce CO2… not a waste product.
Now I guess I can say that my calories are consumed chemically… but that my CO2 is not contained… Now if I could only figure out how to sequester… never mind…
Anthony’s inherent skepticism seems to have abandoned him in this case. I’m one of those who firmly believes that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. It’s a good saying to live by, in the absence of compelling information to the contrary. I hope I’m wrong in this case, but there is too much over-selling going on in science these days for me to take this at face value.
Richard Winsor just pooped his/her pants!!!!!;)
Alfred
Unfortunately, it also produces carbon dioxide, which is difficult to capture and bad for the environment.
Facepalm. Drank the Kool-Aid didn’t he?
I read the Babcock & Wilcox paper on the technology earlier today, and it does look good from certain perspectives, in that it can sequester or seperate CO2 cheaper than other ways of doing it, coming in only slightly less efficient than a conventional powerplant.
The Coal Direct Chemical Loop has nothing to do with syngas. They’re just reducing iron oxide in one chamber, letting the oxygen in the iron oxide combine with carbon in the coal to produce nothing but CO2. That means the CO2 isn’t mixed with atmospheric nitrogen, and I assume the far lower reaction temperatures means sulfur dioxide and mercury are also reduced, staying mostly in the coal ash.
Then they take the hot iron slag (as pellets), easily seperated from the ash, and burn it with outside air, which is what produces the heat to run the turbines and keep the reaction going. Oxidizing the iron doesn’t produce any CO2 because there’s no carbon with it, and probably no sulfur or mercury, either. The only exhaust in the second reaction should be the nitrogen that was already in the air, which didn’t take part in the combustion. So then the hot iron oxide from the second heat-liberating reaction is dumped back in the first chamber to continue the process.
It’s basically a two-step combustion process to get a pure source of oxygen for the carbon reaction, instead of using an oxygen/nitrogen mix, whereas regular air is okay for the iron to iron oxide reaction. The energy in the coal is being moved over to the iron, producing nothing but CO2 (and some trace methane and steam), then the iron is burned in a seperate, cleaner combustion process. The benefit is that there aren’t a whole lot of losses using this indirect method, so it comes out way better than conventional scrubbers or seperators added to the back end of a normal coal combustion cycle.
So it’s less efficient than what we do now, but more efficient than what the EPA was otherwise going to force everyone to do. I can’t say if that’s good or bad, but if someone can figure out how to burn these iron pellets in a fireplace (which wouldn’t have the stink and soot of coal) letting people heat their houses at coal energy prices instead of paying firewood or propane prices, returning the iron logs for a “recharge”, they’ll make a fortune.
While CO2 capture is perhaps not as great a feature as the developers appear to believe, there may yet be some merit to the technique. A great deal of expense and effort goes into removing fly ash and combustion byproducts from the exhaust gases in a power plant, here the exhaust is neatly contained. Secondly, there is the potential for more complete oxidation and the use of soft or brown coal with no increase in pollution. Should the net cost of operation be reduced, power plant operators will be specifying this technique for new construction in short order.
I’d prefer the simplified version.
1. Mix the pulverized coal and rust particles (could be from scrap) into reactor chamber.
2. Ignite mix.
3. Maintain forced air blast feeding in at the bottom, controlling flow for temperature with no un-reacted oxygen allowed through to the top.
4. Extract the molten steel from bottom of reactor chamber, reload fresh mix at top as needed.
5. Use heat of cooling ingots or rolled shapes to make the steam for the electricity generators.
Addendum: I guess you could process the gasses coming off of the burning mix, capture the carbon dioxide and any nitrogen oxides, if you really wanted to.
Perhaps a nice water misting to capture the gases, which would make a nice liquid acid mix you could use to break down an iron source (scrap, ore) into the little rust particles.
What do you think, not clean/Green enough? Or too feasible/practical for the EPA to allow it?
This thing is all pain for no gain! It is all about sequestration. Take a step back and look at the overall picture here. The overall net chemical reaction is still C + O2 => CO2. Because you have now added extra steps to the process, you MUST get less useable energy to put into the electric grid at the end per ton of coal (carbon) burned. Thus, this process leads to MORE coal combusted to produce the same amount of useable energy as just burning it in air the normal way. Less efficiency means increased cost.
Also, since you produce almost 3.7tons of CO2 for every one ton of coal, and we are burning millions, if not billions, of tons of coal annualy, that is one huge quantity of CO2 they plan on storing somewhere. That can niether be done safely or cheaply (people have already died in China when natural CO2 came out of the ground into a village). And since CO2 is not going to be causing CAGW, there is absolutely no gain to be had in capturing and sequestering all of this CO2. Thus this technology has ZERO benefits at a huge cost! The only thing it serves to do is further drastically increase the cost of energy and drive even more people into poverty.
This will make Solyndra look like an excellent bargain. This is the one and only time I can think of where I would agree with the CAGW warmists. It is an incredibly stupid idea.
pottereaton says:
February 20, 2013 at 11:21 pm
Anthony’s inherent skepticism seems to have abandoned him in this case. I’m one of those who firmly believes that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
++++
Nothing here sounds too good to be true. I need some efficiency numbers such as what’s the expected cost to produce a kWh of energy once/if the process is improved. Give me some numbers please. If numbers look promising and if we really someday believe CO2 to be a bad thing, maybe there could be a glimmer of hope in my mind. But at this point, it’s a pretty neat rehashing of old technology used in metallurgy.
When I worked in the foundry, we’d first burn off the carbon in cheap metals to make low carbon alloys. Then, we’d add aluminum to suck the oxygen from the slag (oxides of metals). This created heat to get the allow to temperature. Of course there was purging of Argon and Nitrogen with low amounts of oxygen to burn off the carbon at the beginning of the process… and we’d have to add pure silicon to get the si content back since its affinity to oxygen is higher than carbon… bla bla bla…