Gregoire's CleanTech Blog

Great Point Energy converts coal into pipeline-grade natural gas : coal will be back in your basement

In the second half of the 20th century, oil- and natural gas-burning furnaces drove coal out of the home-heating business across North America. But if Great Point Energy--a Boston-area startup with a low-cost process for converting coal into pipeline-grade natural gas--has its way, coal may start keeping us toasty again before long.

Great Point Energy of Cambridge, MA, says its process is cheaper and more reliable than drilling for new natural gas or importing liquefied natural gas from the same unstable regions. "We can take coal out of the ground and put it in a natural-gas pipeline for less than the cost of new natural-gas drilling and exploration activities," says CEO Andrew Perlman.

Traditional coal-to-methane plants like the 1970s-era Dakota Gasification plant in Beulah, ND, and new plants envisioned by General Electric (GE) and ConocoPhillips are costly because they require a series of chemical plants operating at a wide range of conditions. In these plants, cryogenic equipment operating just a few degrees above absolute zero feeds pure oxygen to the gasifier, where coal baked to up to 2,500 ºF breaks down into a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen called syngas. From there, the syngas is subsequently catalytically transformed into high-grade methane in a separate reactor.

In contrast, Great Point compresses the process into one single, efficient reactor by moving the catalysts into the gasifier itself. The key is a proprietary, recyclable catalyst developed in house with help from gasification and catalysis experts at Southern Illinois University, the University of Toronto, and the University of Tennessee, among others. The catalyst (which Perlman cagily describes as "a formulation of abundant low-cost metals") lowers the amount of heat required to gasify coal and simultaneously transforms the gasified coal into methane. In fact, the heat released in the syngas-to-methane step is sufficient to sustain the gasification, eliminating the need to fire up the reactions with purified oxygen. "It's perfectly heat balanced," says Perlman.

On the strength of lab-scale demonstrations with its catalyst, Perlman and his partners have picked up $37 million from venture-capital firms Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and Advanced Technology Ventures to test their catalyst in a pilot plant. Rather than building a pilot plant from scratch, Great Point accelerated the process by leasing one from the utility-supported Gas Technology Institute at Des Plaines, IL. Perlman says Great Point ran the plant's 14-inch-in-diameter, 60-foot-high gasifier for a week in November with the firm's proprietary catalyst, converting Illinois Powder River Basin low-sulfur coal into between 13,000 and 14,000 cubic feet of natural gas per day. He anticipates that a second run this spring will give him and his partners the data they need to take the next step: designing a larger but still precommercial plant that he expects to have operating by 2009. Subsequent testing at Des Plaines will evaluate the catalysts with dirtier yet more energetic petroleum coke, a byproduct that the average refinery generates at the rate of 5,000 to 10,000 tons per day--more than enough to fuel a commercial-scale synthetic-gas plant.

Meanwhile, Perlman says he is searching for a coal mine or refinery in the western United States to site Great Point's first plants. The idea is to produce natural gas close to oil producers who need the synthetic-gas plant's largest byproduct: carbon dioxide. Dakota Gasification has blazed this trail. Its synthetic-gas plant converts 18,000 tons of lignite coal into 170 million cubic feet of synthetic natural gas per day--enough to heat 2,500 homes for a year. But it also sells its CO₂ to the aging oil fields of southeastern Saskatchewan, in the process burying more CO₂ in a year than 100,000 cars release in their operational lifetime. (See "Carbon Dioxide for Sale.") "Our CO₂, instead of being a liability, is actually a saleable byproduct," says Perlman, who estimates that oil producers in the west are willing to pay $20 to $40 per ton of CO₂. That said, Perlman has not factored revenue from CO₂ into his business plan. What is clear is the potential for coal. "The U.S. has 3 percent of the world's natural gas but 26 percent of the coal," he says. "Wyoming's coal could supply U.S. natural-gas needs for 100 years."

And natural-gas distributors are eager for the gas. Evansville, IN-based utility Vectren, which supplies gas and power to more than one million customers in Indiana and Ohio, has signed a 30-year deal to pay roughly $5 to $6 per million BTUs for synthetic gas from the $1.5 billion plant that GE hopes to build in Indiana. Vectren spokesman Mike Roeder acknowledges that there is a risk that the gas price could fall in the future, but he says the security of supply is worth it. "Reasonably priced gas has not been an option for our customers for at least the past five years," he says. "So we have a very strong interest in the project moving forward."

The attraction is clear: gasification of coal offers a fixed-price alternative to the volatility of natural-gas markets. Indiana officials note that natural gas from GE's plant at $5 to $6 per million BTUs would be well below the current price of $7.50 to $8.50 per million BTUs. Projecting that natural-gas prices will remain high, the officials estimate that GE's plant would save consumers more than $3.7 billion over the next 30 years. Therein lies the challenge in financing these plants: no one wants to be left on the hook if the natural-gas price crashes, as it did in the 1980s and '90s. Great Point Energy's simpler conversion process offers a safer bet, says Perlman, because it should deliver pipeline-quality gas from coal for less than $3 per million BTUs.

Source :Technology Review

China's Coal Future (part II)

While China's desire to end its dependence on foreign oil is helping to drive huge capital investments in liquefaction technology, the country's power producers are moving much more slowly to take advantage of coal gasification. What they, like their American counterparts, are missing is an incentive to upgrade from conventional pulverized-coal plants to the more expensive gasification plants. According to Li Wenhua, the former 863 program manager (who now directs gasification research in China for General Electric), Chinese industrialists perceive pulverized-coal plants as a license to print money. "People say you shouldn't call it a power plant; it's a money-making machine," says Li. As yet, no power company has been willing to be the first to hit the off switch.

Ironically, China's move to a more open economy has hampered efforts to deploy more innovative technologies. In the 1990s, it looked as if China's power sector was headed for its own gasification revolution. In 1993, China's leading power engineering firm, China Power Engineering Consulting in Beijing, began designing the country's first gasification power plant. The monopoly utility of the era, the State Power Corporation, planned to build the commercial-scale plant in Yantai, a thriving seaport not far from the Bohai Sea. The Yantai plant was to be the beginning of a transition to cleaner coal technology, says Zhao Jie, the plant's designer, now vice president of China Power Engineering. "China wanted to take a cleaner and more efficient way to produce power," says Zhao. Instead, the demonstration plant she designed went on a roller-coaster ride to nowhere. Design work was temporarily halted in 1994 when the cost of the technology was deemed unacceptably high, revived in the late 1990s, and then cut adrift after 2002 by the breakup of the State Power Corporation.

The Yantai power plant was based on integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology. IGCC plants resemble natural-gas-fired power plants--they use two turbines to capture mechanical and heat energy from expanding combustion gases--but are fueled with syngas from an integrated coal gasification plant. They're not emissions free, but their gas streams are more concentrated, so the sulfurous soot, carbon dioxide, and other pollutants they generate are easier to separate and capture. Of course, once the carbon dioxide--the main greenhouse gas--is captured, engineers still need to find a place to stow it. The most promising strategy is to sequester it deep within saline aquifers and oil reservoirs. In preliminary analyses, Chinese geologists have estimated that aging oil fields and aquifers could absorb more than a trillion tons of carbon dioxide--more than China's coal-fired plants would emit, at their current rate, for hundreds of years.

The Huaneng Group, a power producer based in Beijing, has pulled together a consortium of power and coal interests (Shenhua included) called GreenGen to build the first Chinese IGCC demo plant by 2010; like the related ­FutureGen project organized by the U.S. Department of Energy, GreenGen is to start with power production, then add carbon capture and storage. China's vice premier, Zeng Peiyan, made an appearance at GreenGen's ceremonial debut last summer, indicating Beijing's support for the project.

The problem is that IGCC plants still cost about 10 percent to 20 percent more per megawatt than pulverized-coal-fired power plants. (And that's without carbon dioxide capture.) China's power producers--much like their counterparts in the United States and Europe--are waiting for a financial or political reason to make the switch. In part, what's been missing is regulation that penalizes conventional coal plants. And China's environmental agencies lack the resources and power to make companies comply even with regulations already on the books. Top officials in Beijing admit that their edicts are widely ignored, as new power plants are erected without environmental assessments and, according to some sources, without required equipment for pollution control.

Even advocates of IGCC technology expect that its widespread deployment in China will take at least another decade. Indeed, Du Minghua, a director for coal chemistry at the Chinese Coal Research Institute, predicts that it will be 2020 before application of IGCC technology begins in earnest.

Waiting to Inhale

Despite such pessimistic predictions, China's vast experience with advanced coal technologies and its proven ability to implement new technologies at a startling pace provide ample room for optimism. When you're racing into Shanghai at one-third the speed of sound on a train supported by an electromagnetic force field, it's hard to believe that a country capable of such an engineering feat will continue to ignore the deadly pollution engulfing its cities.

To some analysts, the switch to clean-coal technology seems almost inevitable. "China has to rely on coal for future electricity and fuel needs, and it will eventually have to cap its CO₂ emissions," says Guodong Sun, a technology policy expert at New York's Stony Brook University who has advised the Chinese government on energy policy. "Gasification is one of a very few technologies that can reconcile those conflicting scenarios at reasonable cost."

Still, the timing of such a technology transition is very much in question. Will China really wait until 2020 to start the process of cleaning up its coal-fired power plants? The answer will depend, ultimately, on when China begins to feel that using coal gasification to generate electricity is as urgent as using it to produce transportation fuels--when the costs of air pollution become as worrisome as the costs of relying on foreign oil.

Source : Technology Review

China's Coal Future (Part I)

A visitor arriving in Shanghai immediately notices China's technological conundrum. Through the windows of the magnetically levitated train that covers the 30 kilometers from Pudong International Airport to Shanghai at up to 430 kilometers per hour, both the progress the country is making and the price it is paying for it are apparent. Most days, a yellow haze hangs over Shanghai's construction frenzy. Pollution is the leading cause of death in China, killing more than a million people a year. And the primary cause of pollution is also the source of the energy propelling the ultramodern train: coal.

To keep pace with the country's economic growth, ­China's local governments, utilities, and entrepreneurs are building, on average, one coal-fired power plant per week. The power plants emit a steady stream of soot, sulfur dioxide, and other toxic pollutants into the air; they also spew out millions of tons of carbon dioxide. In November, the International Energy Agency projected that China will become the world's largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in 2009, overtaking the United States nearly a decade earlier than previously anticipated. Coal is expected to be responsible for three-quarters of that carbon dioxide.

And the problem will get worse. Between now and 2020, China's energy consumption will more than double, according to expert estimates. Ratcheting up energy efficiency, tapping renewable resources with hydro dams and wind turbines, and building nuclear plants can help, but--at least in the coming two decades--only marginally. Since China has very little in the way of oil and gas reserves, its future depends on coal. With 13 percent of the world's proven reserves, China has enough coal to sustain its economic growth for a century or more. The good news is that ­China's leaders saw the coal rush coming in the 1990s and began exploring a range of advanced technologies. Chief among them is coal gasification. "It's the key for clean coal in China," says chemical engineer Li ­Wenhua, who directed advanced coal development for Beijing's national high-tech R&D program (better known in China as the "863" program) from 2001 through 2005.

Gasification transforms coal's complex mix of hydrocarbons into a hydrogen-rich gas known as synthesis gas, or "syngas." Power plants can burn syngas as cleanly as they can natural gas. In addition, with the right catalysts and under the right conditions, the basic chemical building blocks in syngas combine to form the hydrocarbon ingredients of gasoline and diesel fuel. As a result, coal gasification has the potential both to squelch power plants' emission of soot and smog and to decrease China's growing dependence on imported oil. It could even help control emissions of carbon dioxide, which is more easily captured from syngas plants than from conventional coal-fired plants.

Despite China's early anticipation of the need for coal gasification, however, its implementation of the technology in power plants has lagged. The country's electricity producers lack the economic and political incentives to break from their traditional practices.

In contrast, large-scale efforts to produce liquid transportation fuels using coal gasification are well under way. China's largest coal firm, Shenhua Group, plans to start up the country's first coal-to-fuels plant in 2007 or early 2008, in the world's most ambitious application of coal liquefaction since World War II. Shenhua plans to operate eight liquefaction plants by 2020, producing, in total, more than 30 million tons of synthetic oil annually--enough to displace more than 10 percent of China's projected oil imports.

China's progress in constructing coal-conversion plants puts it far ahead of the United States, where coal gasification is still recovering from a damaged reputation. Gasification demonstration programs initiated in the U.S. after the energy crises of the 1970s were orphaned when oil and gas prices plummeted in the 1980s. That left many with the impression that the technology itself was unreliable (see "Carbon Dioxide for Sale," July 2005). In China, by contrast, oil never looked cheap, and coal has never lost its shine.

Coal and Cashmere

Northern China is fast becoming the epicenter of China's energy industry. The leading draw is the Shenfu Dongsheng coalfield, a 31,000-square-kilometer solid layer of shallow coal that stretches from the northern tip of China's Shaanxi Province to the southern edge of Nei Mongol, or Inner Mongolia. The Dongsheng field's estimated reserve of 223.6 billion tons of coal makes it the world's seventh largest; efforts to convert much of that coal to transportation fuels could make it the world's most profitable.

Until recently, Inner Mongolia's coal capital, Erdos, was largely untouched by the modern world, bounded by mountain ranges and the Great Wall to the south and by the Yellow River to the north. Its isolation is now over, thanks to freshly poured highways and new rail lines rolling over its fissured hills and steep valleys. An airport should open this year.

Erdos's GDP doubled between 2001 and 2004, largely because of coal, chemicals, and cashmere (Erdos supplies a quarter of the world's cashmere). To reach the coalfields, you drive 40 minutes south of the city, passing a 1950s-era mausoleum for Genghis Khan, the 13th-century warrior who conquered much of Asia. As you approach the dry floodplain of the Wulanmulun River, the imposing infrastructure of a dozen coal mines, including some of the world's largest and most mechanized, leaps out of the barren landscape. The region is also home to several hundred smaller, less modern mines (gases and cave-ins kill at least 6,000 Chinese coal miners a year). Miners on their day off zip by on mopeds, three or four to a vehicle, racing past 40-ton trucks heaped with coal. Along the highway, coal-­sorting terminals load railcars destined for power plants and ports on the industrialized east coast.

None of that infrastructure and activity, however, prepares a visitor for Shenhua's coal-to-fuels complex, which rises from a plateau cut into the hills. It is an impressive site, with its own coal-fired power plant, gasification plants, and two massive reactors where coal will be liquefied, each weighing 2,250 metric tons (Shenhua claimed the world hoisting record when it lifted the reactors into place last June). Flush from a $2.95 billion IPO in 2005 and $5 billion in annual revenues from its integrated mines, railroads, and power plants, Shenhua is rapidly expanding its operations. It sold 113 million metric tons of coal in just the first half of 2006, nearly matching the previous year's total. If Shenhua maintains that pace this year, it may become the world's largest producer of coal.

China's government in Beijing created Shenhua a decade ago to bring economies of scale and modern technology to bear on the Dongsheng coalfields. The company's $1.5 billion coal-to-fuels plant is an expression of that strategy--a facility so technically ambitious that many experts, Chinese and Western alike, doubted it would ever be built.

The production of transportation fuels from coal dates to early-20th-century Germany, where chemists developed two approaches to converting coal's solid long-chain hydrocarbons into the shorter liquid hydrocarbons found in motor fuels. (Nazi Germany, with little access to oil, relied heavily on these processes to fuel its highly mechanized army and air force, producing gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel from coal.) Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch invented the better known of the two approaches in the 1920s. Fischer-Tropsch synthesis reduces coal to syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. A catalyst, often cobalt, then causes the carbon and hydrogen atoms to reconnect into new compounds, such as alcohols and fuels. Fischer-Tropsch synthesis is conventional chemistry today: in South Africa, for example, Johannesburg-based Sasol built Fischer-Tropsch coal-to-oil plants to ensure the country's fuel supply during the trade boycotts of the apartheid years; and by swapping in different catalysts, China's coal-to-chemicals gasification plants have employed Fischer-Tropsch for decades to yield products such as synthetic fertilizers and methanol.

Shenhua's plant, in contrast, chose Fischer-Tropsch's lesser-known rival, invented by Friedrich Bergius a decade earlier. Though used extensively by the Nazis, Bergius's process was subsequently abandoned. The process has come to be known as direct liquefaction, because it bypasses the syngas step. In direct liquefaction, the bulk of the coal is pulverized and blended with some of the plant's synthetic oil, then treated with hydrogen and heated to 450 °C in the presence of an iron catalyst, which breaks the hydrocarbon chains into the shorter chains suitable for refining into liquid fuels.

Direct liquefaction produces more fuel per ton of coal than Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Experts at the Chinese Coal Research Institute in Beijing estimate that the process captures 55 to 56 percent of the energy in coal, compared to just 45 percent for Fischer-Tropsch. However, direct lique­faction is also far more complicated, requiring separate power and gasification plants to deliver heat and hydrogen and considerable recycling of oil, hydrogen, and coal sludge between separate sections of the plant. And breaking down hydrocarbons to just the right length requires exquisite control of the operating conditions and a consistent coal supply.

Shenhua redesigned the process over the last five years to boost efficiency and reduce waste but, at the same time, increased its complexity. And the company is taking a huge engineering and economic risk by pursuing so novel a technology on such a vast scale.

By the end of this year, Shenhua hopes to be pumping out 20,000 barrels of synthetic oil per day, nearly 500 times as much as its pilot plant in Shanghai produces. According to Jerald Fletcher, a natural-resource economist at West Virginia University in Morgantown, the Erdos plant constitutes a $1.5 billion experiment that could only take place in China. "It would be hard to get that kind of commitment of funds in the West without a more proven technology," says Fletcher. Eric Larson, an expert in energy technology and modeling at Princeton University, puts it more bluntly: "It doesn't make a lot of sense to build a huge plant like that, because it may not work."

But for the Chinese government, the rewards could be worth the risk. Despite its 2005 IPO of some assets, ­Shenhua remains a largely state-owned firm, and the direct-­liquefaction plant serves a critical state interest: energy security. "No matter how big the cost, Shenhua will build it," says Zhou Zhijie, a gasification expert at East China University of Science and Technology's Institute of Clean Coal Technology in Shanghai. "China's government will support this project until the liquid flows."

Of course, if the new plant works, Shenhua stands to earn a substantial profit. The company predicts that its synthetic oil will turn a profit at roughly $30 a barrel, though many analysts say $45 is more realistic. (The U.S. Department of Energy's most recent price forecast predicts that crude oil will dip to $47 a barrel in 2014, then climb steadily to $57 a barrel in 2030.) Hedging its bets, Shenhua has also entered a preliminary agreement with partners Shell and Sasol concerning several similar-sized or bigger Fischer-Tropsch fuel plants in Northern China, which would start up in 2012.

Shenhua's Chinese coal competitors, too, are already breaking ground on their versions of coal-to-fuel plants. The Yankuang coal group, the second-largest coal producer in China, is planning a Fischer-Tropsch fuel plant near Erdos that will use a proprietary gasifier and catalyst.

Beyond the risks inherent in the large-scale deployment of unproven technology, the gasification building boom also is an environmental gamble. Indeed, what may ultimately check China's coal-to-oil ambitions is water. China's Coal Research Institute estimates that Shenhua's plant will consume 10 tons of water for every ton of synthetic oil produced (360 gallons of water per barrel of oil), and the ratio is even worse for Fischer-Tropsch plants. Last summer, China's National Development and Reform Commission, the powerful body charged with regulating China's economy and approving large capital projects, issued a warning about the environmental consequences of the "runaway development" of synthetic-oil and chemical plants, which it said will consume tens of millions of cubic meters of water annually.

That prediction sounds particularly ominous in northern China, where water is scarce. Erdos is a mix of scrub and desert whose meager water supplies are already overtaxed by population growth and existing power plants. Zhou Ji Sheng, who as vice manager of ZMMF, one of Shenhua's Erdos-based competitors, is seeking financing for a gasification project, acknowledges that water scarcity could put an end to coal gasification in the area. "Even though we have so much coal, if we have no water, we will just have to use the traditional way--to dig it out and transport it," he says. "Water is the key factor for us to develop this new industry." Zhou says his firm plans to supplement its water supply by building a 120-kilometer pipeline to the Yellow River. But evaporation from hydroelectric reservoirs, the increased demand of growing cities and industries, and the effects of climate change mean that in the summer, the Yellow River barely reaches the sea.

Source : Technology Review

A fascinating paper on the future of the coal industry

When President Bush said “America is addicted to oil”, he could also have said that America is addicted to coal.

Most Americans are not aware of the sheer scale of current coal use in the United States. Over 50% of electricity is generated from coal with 20 pounds of coal per a person being burnt every day to generate electricity.

While questions are increasingly being raised about remaining oil and gas reserves, we are assured that there is plenty of coal left to burn. Indeed in a talk to a meeting of builders and contractors at the Capital Hilton on June 8, 2005 President Bush asked the audience,
"Do you realize we've got 250 million years of coal?"

Hopefully readers will spot this obvious gaffe. The figure quoted by the coal industry is 250 years of reserves, not 250 million years. The energy illiteracy of the average person is worrying enough, but in our political leadership it is a real cause for concern.

There are an estimated one trillion tons of recoverable coal in the world, by far the largest reserve of fossil fuel left on the planet. The United States has over 25% of the world’s recoverable coal reserves. An important point to remember when considering how many years of coal we have left is that these figures are based on current rates of consumption and do no take into account growing demand for electricity. Since 1980 coal use for power generation has increased by over 75%.

A good percentage of the coal that’s left is too dirty to be burned in conventional power plants and much of its buried in inconvenient places. In 1974 the USGS published an estimate of the recoverable reserve base at 243 billion tons. This however failed to take into account real world restrictions on mining: state and national parks, roads, towns, proximity to railroads, coal quality, losses during mining and geologic limitations. When these are factored in less than 50% of the coal estimated as “recoverable” in the 1974 study was available for mining. This fails to taken into account how much is economically recoverable at market prices. In a 1989 study by the U.S. Bureau of Mines in Kentucky, at $30 a ton 22% of coal was economically recoverable. The author Tim Rohrbacher wrote “a strong argument can be made that traditional coal producing regions may soon be experiencing resource depletion problems far greater and much sooner than previously thought”.

Recently there has been a rise in suggestions that America should replace its addiction to oil, with diesel fuel made from American coal. There is currently in place a Coal-to-Liquids Tax Credit of $0.50/gallon in place until 2023. The idea has been around for a long while, in the second world war it was used by the Germans to make Nazi oil from coal when their supply of normal gasoline was cut off. I remember when I first started researching peak oil I realised after awhile if things got bad that coal rich countries might turn to making Nazi oil in desperation when petroleum depletion started to bite. Of course calls to start building Coal to Liquids plants aren’t proof that petroleum depletion is well advanced, but I hardly see it as a source for optimism.

You don’t need to be an expert on coal liquefaction to realise that it’s a bad idea as this article on AutoblogGreen shows. It’s expensive, uses lots of water, produces double the carbon dioxide when compared to regular petroleum use and produces diesel when the vast majority of the U.S. car fleet runs on gasoline. Over at the Ergosphere, the Engineer Poet crunches the numbers and compares coal to liquids versus electric vehicles . He calculates that to replace the United States petroleum consumption at current rates would take 214 four billion dollar coal to liquid plants (that’s not far off a trillion dollars in investment) and the mining of an additional one and a half billion tons of coal a year, in addition to the one billion tons already being mined for electricity generation. It should be noted that the high percentage of electricity currently produced from coal is not an argument against electric vehicles, this is something I have covered in detail elsewhere on this blog. Electric motors are inherently more efficient than the internal combustion engine. It is far easier to control emissions from large power plant, than from the exhausts of thousands of cars. Electric vehicles are not reliant on one source of energy and in the longer term polluting non-renewable sources of electricity can be replaced by clean alternative energy.

The coal industry’s promotion of the idea that America has a vast reserve of coal is slowing the transition to clean renewable sources of energy. In addition to tv spots showing child actors extolling the virtues of coal , the industry has spent heavily to get the ear of the political establishment. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal company spent over 5% of its revenues on political contributions, for comparison Exxon Mobil and General Motors spent a fraction of one percent.

In seeming return for such generosity, The Energy Policy Act of 2005 included five billion dollars of subsidies for the coal industry.

Virtually every power plant built in America between 1975 and 2002 was fired by natural gas. However between 1970 and 2000, the amount of coal America used to generate electricity tripled.

Now with natural gas prices rising steeply, U.S. power utilities are expected to build the equivalent of 280 500 megawatt coal-fired electricity power plants between 2003 and 2030. China is already constructing the equivalent of one large coal burning power plant a week with two thirds of energy production coming from dirty coal. 16 of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are in China. India is the third largest producer of coal in the world, also getting over two thirds of its energy from coal. If these new coal plants are built, they will add as much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere as has been released by all the coal burned in the last 250 years.

Coal’s sale price may be low, but the true costs of its extraction, processing and consumption are high. Our use of coal leads to ravaged mountains , air pollution from acidic and toxic emissions and fouled water supplies. Coal mining is massively more invasive than oil or gas drilling. Coal burning power plants account for more than two-thirds of sulfur dioxide, 22% of nitrogen oxides, nearly 40% of carbon dioxide and a third of all mercury emissions in the United States. Results of the largest mercury hair sampling project in the U.S. found mercury levels exceeding the EPA’s recommended limit of one microgram of mercury per gram of hair in one in five women of childbearing age tested. Each year coal plants produce about 130 million tons of solid waste, about three times more than all the municipal garbage in the U.S. The American Lung Association calculates that around 24,000 people a year die prematurely from the effects of coal fired power plant pollution.

Techniques for addressing CO2 emissions exist, although the will to quickly implement them lags.

The techniques electric utilities could apply to keep much of the carbon dioxide they produce from entering the atmosphere are known as CO2 capture or geological carbon sequestration. This involves separating the CO2 as it is created and pumping it underground to be stored.

Until recently I wasn’t aware that all the technological components needed for carbon sequestration are commercially ready (according to an article in September’s Scientific American magazine ) as they have already been proven in applications unrelated to avoidance of climate change. However integrated systems have yet to be built on a commercial scale.

Capture technologies have been deployed extensively throughout the world both in the manufacture of chemicals (e.g. fertilizer) and in the purification of natural gas. Industry has gained experience with CO2 storage in operations to purify natural gas, principally in Canada, as well as using carbon dioxide to boost oil production, mainly in the United States.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC ) estimated in 2005 that it is highly likely that geologic locations worldwide are capable of sequestering at least two trillion metric tons of CO2 - more than is likely to be produced by fossil fuel consuming power plants this century.

Carbon sequestration is not without risk. The two main risks are sudden escape and gradual leakage of carbon dioxide. In 1986 at Lake Nyos in Cameroon, Africa carbon dioxide originating from a volcano killed over 1,700 people. However according to IPCC this is unlikely for engineered CO2 storage in carefully selected, deep porous geologic rock formations. In regard to gradual leakage the IPCC estimated in 2005 that in excess of 99% of carbon sequestered is “very likely” to remain in place for at least one hundred years.

Studies indicate that 85%-95% of the carbon in coal could be sequestered using existing power generation technologies.

A key point is that fundamentally different approaches to carbon capture would need to be pursued for power plants using the old pulverised coal technology as opposed to the newer integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC). IGCC plants use heat and pressure to cook off impurities in coal and convert it into a synthetic gas, this gas is then burnt in a turbine. These plants are 10% more efficient than conventional plants, consume 40% less water, produce 50% less solid waste and burn almost as cleanly as natural gas plants.

Although building IGCC power plants is slightly more expensive (10%-20%), IGCC is likely to be the most effective and cheapest option for carbon capture.

In an IGCC plant designed to capture CO2 the syngas exiting the gasifier, after being cooled and cleaned of particles, would be reacted with steam to make a gas made up mainly of CO2 and hydrogen. The CO2 would then be extracted and pumped to a storage site. The remaining hydrogen would be burned to generate more power. Captured carbon dioxide can by piped up to several hundred miles to a suitable geologic storage site.

A recent study found that for carbon capture in a saline formation one hundred kilometers from a power plant would cost an additional 1.9 cents per kilowatt-hour (over the generation cost of 4.7 cents per kilowatt-hour for a coal IGCC plant that vents carbon dioxide), making a 40% premium. With coal generation costing 6.6 cents for a kilowatt hour, this would make wind power cheaper than coal and with technology advances could also provide a boost to other renewable energy sources (e.g. concentrating solar power).

However electricity producers are rushing to build conventional coal pulverisation power plants, just as they rushed to build coal plants without sulfur scrubbers prior to legislation coming into force. This is short-sighted as it is more expensive, more energy intensive and less effective to attempt to capture carbon from conventional coal power plants. It is highly likely that having built these plants, that the coal industry would expect the taxpayer to foot the bill for the additional expense. Of the one hundred or so plants being planned or under construction in America only a handful use IGCC technology.

FutureGen , is the Department of Energy financed one billion dollar zero emissions plant intended to turn coal into electricity and hydrogen. Proposed in 2003 and backed by a consortium of coal and electric companies, it is not due to come online until at least 2013. Many in the industry consider this date to be dubious nicknaming the project NeverGen. It is intended to make it look like the coal industry is doing something, while actually doing very little and in the process putting off changing how coal plants are built for a decade or two. Indeed in its Coal Vision report (pdf), the industry does not plan on building “ultra-low emissions” plants on a commerical scale until between 2025 and 2035. According to the report “there is considerable debate about the need to reduce CO2 emissions”. The report also states that “achieving meaningful CO2 reductions would require significant technical advances”.

The report further states “large scale and long term demonstrations of carbon sequestration technologies over a geographically and geologically diverse range of... sites are needed before making any policy decisions concerning carbon management”. The coal industry wants sequestration to be demonstrated not only in the United States but additionally “similar assessments need to be conducted internationally”. In terms of who should pay for these demonstrations the report writes “the government must play a significant role”.

It sounds that if the coal industry has its way, it won’t be using carbon capture for many decades.

Instead of waiting until 2013 or even 2035, the coal industry could be building IGCC power plants with carbon capture now. The rush to build conventional coal pulverisation plants is extremely short sighted as these plants could be operating for the next fifty years or more.

In the first instance I advocate maximising our use of clean renewable energy. At the moment wind power is being used to generate only 0.5% of electricity in the United States. Using existing technology wind power could cost effecively generate a significant portion of many countries electricity supply. Significant sums of money should also be invested in making solar power and wave power more cost effective, as well as investments in energy long shots such as cellulosic ethanol and fusion power. If we are going to continue to use coal as global society as a major source of energy, which seems pretty much inevitable for at least the next few decades in key countries such as the United States, China & India, then we should be building IGCC power plants with carbon capture and retiring existing dirty coal plants now. If there are unforeseen problems with carbon capture, we need to find out now rather than in a few decades time. The coal industry's business as usual attitude is simply not acceptable.

Jeff Goodell in his recent book “Big Coal” concludes, “coal gives us a false sense of security, if we run out of gas and oil, we can just switch over to coal… the most dangerous things about our continued dependence on coal is it preserves the illusion that we don’t have to change our thinking”.

Further Reading:

“Big Coal ” by Jeff Goodell

“What to Do About Coal?” in Scientific American September, 2006

Lively Discussion of Coal to Liquids

Coal Vision by the Coal Based Generation Stakeholders Group

Mountaintop Removal

A Quick Guide to Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining

When Will Coal Production Peak?

Source : Alternative Energy Blog

Electrabel développe son parc de production en Europe

L’Europe est aujourd’hui confrontée à des besoins d’investissements très importants, tant en renouvellement qu’en construction de nouvelles capacités de production. Plusieurs événements récents ont souligné la tension croissante entre offre et demande d’électricité.

Electrabel s’est fixée pour objectif de porter sa capacité installée de 29 000 à 35 000 mégawatts d’ici 2009, sans remettre en cause sa politique de diversification et ses critères stricts de rentabilité. Dans le cadre de ce plan, Electrabel a entamé la phase de construction de plusieurs projets et en a mis de nouveaux en développement.

En Belgique, Electrabel a démarré les travaux de préparation pour la nouvelle unité de production électrique sur le site de Sidmar à Gand et pour le repowering de la centrale d’Amercoeur en une unité Turbine Gaz Vapeur (TGV) de 420 MW.

En Allemagne, après des études de faisabilité positives, Electrabel envisage la construction, seule ou en partenariat, de trois nouvelles centrales électriques au gaz (TGV) ou au charbon sur les sites de Stade, Wilhelmshaven et Brunsbüttel. Chaque site présente un potentiel de 800 MW. La première centrale pourrait être mise en service en 2009 (gaz) ou 2010 (charbon).

Aux Pays-Bas, Electrabel a l’intention de construire trois nouvelles centrales au charbon/biomasse (800 – 850 MW) sur la Maasvlakte à Rotterdam et au gaz (TGV, 2 x 400 MW) à Flevo près de Lelystad. La première centrale au gaz entrerait en service en 2009 et l’unité charbon/biomasse en 2011 – 2012.

En France, Electrabel et Gaz de France ont décidé de développer de façon coordonnée les deux projets de centrales à cycle combiné au gaz naturel d’environ 420 MW chacune qu’ils envisageaient initialement de réaliser séparément dans la zone de Fos-sur-Mer :

- sur le site de Sollac Méditerranée pour GdF (mise en service en 2008)
- sur un terrain loué au Port Autonome de Marseille pour Electrabel (mise en service en 2009).

En Italie, la nouvelle centrale de Roselectra (385 MW) est en phase de démarrage. Les travaux de la nouvelle unité TGV de Leini (385 MW) ont débuté et la centrale sera mise en service en 2007. Le programme de repowering des centrales classiques de Tirreno Power suit son cours.

En Espagne, la nouvelle centrale d’Electrabel à Castelnou a produit ses premiers mégawatheures. Cette centrale TGV, d’une puissance électrique maximale de 760 MW, représente un investissement de € 320 millions. En outre, le Ministère de l’Industrie espagnol a accordé à Electrabel l’autorisation administrative pour la construction d’une nouvelle centrale TGV de 1 200 MW à Morata de Tajuña, dans la Communauté Autonome de Madrid, qui pourrait être mise en service en 2009.

Lien: Enerzine.com - Electrabel développe son parc de production en Europe.

CERA: Global Oil Capacity Will Continue to Grow

A well known Cambridge research firm challenges the notion that the world is running out of oil:

Global oil and liquids supply capacity could increase as much as 25% by 2015, with unconventional sources, including  gas-related liquids and extra-heavy oils accounting for a major proportion of  net capacity growth, according to Cambridge Energy Research Associates’ (CERA) July, 2006 benchmark field-by-field analysis of worldwide hydrocarbon liquids production capacity.

CERA’s examination of actual activity and production data covered existing fields and 360 new projects -- 250 new non-OPEC and 110 new OPEC development projects -- expected to start production by 2010. The analysis points to global productive capacity rising from 88.7 mbd in 2006 to 110 mbd in 2015

CERA projects potential capacity growth of 13.3 mbd in the five years from 2006 through 2010, followed by 8 mbd in capacity growth from 2010 through 2015, producing a total of up to 21.3 mbd in new capacity over the next ten years.  These are projects which are either approved and under development or very likely to be approved.

They identified five primary factors affecting strong capacity growth:

• High oil prices and strong competition for access to reserves and pressures on the service sector
• The search for new sources of conventional crude and non-traditional supply
• Increasing global gas productive capacity driving up the volumes of associated liquids
• The pace and scale of deepwater discoveries and development
• E&P company diversification

“During 2000, unconventional liquids represented 16% of global capacity, and by 2006 this had grown to 24% of the total,” they write.  “We expect this strong growth to continue to over one-third of total global capacity (38%) by 2015.

“These levels of growth depend on continuing high rates of investment,” write CERA Director of Oil Industry Activity Peter M. Jackson and CERA Director of Global Oil and Gas Resources Robert W. Esser in Expansion Set to Continue, Global Liquids Capacity to 2015.   “The reference case includes assessments of the 10-year consequences of current disruptions, and assumes that disruptions over the next 10 years will average more or less the same magnitude as the current level with a similar impact.

Contrary to what seems to be a common belief, the overall proportion of lighter liquids is expanding faster than heavy and extra-heavy crudes, according to the CERA report.  Although the market seems to be very focused on heavy and extra-heavy crudes, there is a strong trend toward an expanding stream of light crude, condensates and natural gas liquids (NGLs).

World Oil & Liquids Production Capacity to Grow Significantly through At Least 2015: CERA Update, Press release, August 8, 2008

Source : The Energy Blog - thefraserdomain.typepad.com

A well known Cambridge research firm challenges the notion that the world is running out of oil:

Global oil and liquids supply capacity could increase as much as 25% by 2015, with unconventional sources, including  gas-related liquids and extra-heavy oils accounting for a major proportion of  net capacity growth, according to Cambridge Energy Research Associates’ (CERA) July, 2006 benchmark field-by-field analysis of worldwide hydrocarbon liquids production capacity.

CERA’s examination of actual activity and production data covered existing fields and 360 new projects -- 250 new non-OPEC and 110 new OPEC development projects -- expected to start production by 2010. The analysis points to global productive capacity rising from 88.7 mbd in 2006 to 110 mbd in 2015

CERA projects potential capacity growth of 13.3 mbd in the five years from 2006 through 2010, followed by 8 mbd in capacity growth from 2010 through 2015, producing a total of up to 21.3 mbd in new capacity over the next ten years.  These are projects which are either approved and under development or very likely to be approved.

They identified five primary factors affecting strong capacity growth:

• High oil prices and strong competition for access to reserves and pressures on the service sector
• The search for new sources of conventional crude and non-traditional supply
• Increasing global gas productive capacity driving up the volumes of associated liquids
• The pace and scale of deepwater discoveries and development
• E&P company diversification

“During 2000, unconventional liquids represented 16% of global capacity, and by 2006 this had grown to 24% of the total,” they write.  “We expect this strong growth to continue to over one-third of total global capacity (38%) by 2015.

“These levels of growth depend on continuing high rates of investment,” write CERA Director of Oil Industry Activity Peter M. Jackson and CERA Director of Global Oil and Gas Resources Robert W. Esser in Expansion Set to Continue, Global Liquids Capacity to 2015.   “The reference case includes assessments of the 10-year consequences of current disruptions, and assumes that disruptions over the next 10 years will average more or less the same magnitude as the current level with a similar impact.

Contrary to what seems to be a common belief, the overall proportion of lighter liquids is expanding faster than heavy and extra-heavy crudes, according to the CERA report.  Although the market seems to be very focused on heavy and extra-heavy crudes, there is a strong trend toward an expanding stream of light crude, condensates and natural gas liquids (NGLs).

World Oil & Liquids Production Capacity to Grow Significantly through At Least 2015: CERA Update, Press release, August 8, 2008

Source : The Energy Blog - thefraserdomain.typepad.com

Charbon propre mythe ou réalité ?

Le Délégué Interministériel au Développement Durable a donné son avis pour la sortie du « Charbon propre mythe ou réalité ? ». Le rapport « Charbon propre : mythes ou réalités ? » est le fruit du travail du groupe sur le charbon que le Délégué interministériel au développement durable a mis en place en 2005. Il a regroupé des entreprises françaises, des consultants, des administrations, des organismes de recherche et avec des entités et des ONG internationales.

Selon Christian Brodhag, ce nouveau rapport rappelle l'importance totalement méconnue et sous estimée en France, du charbon, qui est l'énergie qui croit le plus dans le monde actuellement. Cette filière énergétique connaît, en effet, à la fois des hausses de prix plus modérées que ceux du pétrole et du gaz et est basée sur les réserves d'énergie fossile les plus vastes.

Mais, le charbon est aussi le plus fort émetteur de CO2 à quantité d'énergie donnée. Peut-on résoudre la quadrature du cercle énergie / climat / charbon ? Le rapport propose quelques simulations simples de l'impact du charbon. Leur principale conclusion est que le recours au charbon ne sera compatible avec la maîtrise de l'effet de serre qu'avec des systèmes de captage et de stockage du CO2, c'est-à-dire des « centrales à charbon vraiment propre ». L'Europe doit en conséquence, en parallèle aux Etats-Unis, à la Chine, au Canada et à l'Australie, faire l'effort nécessaire de développement technologique, car ce n'est plus un problème de recherche amont : on sait capturer le CO2, certains pilotes industriels tournent déjà.

L'usage du charbon devra être absolument conditionné à ce stockage. Il faudra donc un cadre réglementaire mondial pour l'imposer aux opérateurs, compte tenu des surcoûts induits, précise le délégué interministériel. Des équipes françaises travaillent sur le captage et le stockage du gaz carbonique depuis plus de 10 ans. Elles regroupent des acteurs publics comme l'IFP, l'ADEME le BRGM, Gaz de France, EDF et des acteurs privés comme ALSTOM, TOTAL, Air liquide, SUEZ, Schlumberger ou les ingénieries. La nouvelle Agence Nationale de la Recherche a déjà lancé deux appels à projets sur ce sujet. Est donc fait, dans ce rapport « Charbon propre mythe ou réalité ? », un point sur les actions entreprises, termine Christian Brodhag.

 

Cleaner coal technology has reached a crossroads.

Cleaner coal technology has reached a crossroads.

It appears to be full steam ahead for the incumbent cleaner coal technology, the supercritical steam engine. Siemens and

India

’s Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd have just announced a joint venture to develop coal-fired power plants using Siemen’s supercritical steam engine technology. Rapidly populating large coal generating countries like

China

and

India

, supercritical steam engines operate at 45% electrical efficiency, versus 36% for conventional steam engines, while realizing a 20% reduction in emissions. The addition of biomass can reduce emissions by another 20%. Over 400 supercritical plants are in operation worldwide.   

In developing countries such as the

US

, however, state agencies to coal miners are demanding that investments be made in cleaner burning IGCC plants. The Integrated Coal Gasification Combined Cycle Plant (IGCC) converts coal to a syngas to power a turbine, while CO2 is sequestered.

With hundreds of gigawatts in new coal generation planned, should the developing world also be installing the “cleanest” coal technology?  The developing world’s burgeoning electricity demands would have to wait until the advanced clean coal IGCC technology is commercialized, around 2010. It does give the incumbent supercritical steam engine a few more years to catch up on emission reductions. According to the International Energy Agency, both the advanced ultra coal steam cycled and the IGCC plants have the potential to capture carbon dioxide at an 85% efficiency level.

Next generation ultra-supercritical plants will operate at 55% electrical efficiency by reaching operating temperatures of 700°C. The World Bank calculates that for every one percent in electrical efficiency gains there is a corresponding 2% reduction in specific emissions and particulates.  The first generation IGCC clean coal plant is expected to operate at 45-50% electrical conversion efficiency, with no CO2 emissions. A few decades out, it is estimated that IGCC-SOFC plants that use hydrogen to fuel a high efficiency solid oxide fuel will reach 70 percent efficiency.

Both power plant models are placing their money on the same technology to achieve these efficiency gains: superalloys that can provide high performance at temperatures of 700°C and higher.  Sales in these high margin metals are increasing faster than the price of oil. 

Lien: EcoLog :: Will the Steam Engine Chug Along in the Era of Clean Coal?.