For a minute there I thought I had to get off my couch, when all the while the fact is we don't have to do anything much but keep things afloat for just a few decades more! In fact, we'd best shut up about PO, because if our offspring finds out we knew about it all along, they'll turn and wring our necks come 2036!
Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 8:29 pm Post subject: CO2 storage
Since 1996 Norwegian Statoil has pumped 10 million metric tons of CO2 into sandstone beneath the North Sea floor. So far the thick layer of rock has kept the CO2 trapped. Statoil scientists say that this saline formation could theoretically store all CO2 produced by Europe's power plants for centuries to come.
Some scientists propose that large quanities of Carbon Dioxide could be stored at the bottom of the ocean where intense water pressure would compress the gas into liquid form which would be denser than sea water and would pool on the ocean floor. However they can't be sure it would stay put. If it were to rise and pollute the ocean it could cause a major ecological disaster.
Scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory plan to conduct an experiment later this year injecting CO2 into porous volcanic basalt in Washington State. In theory the CO2 will react with water trapped in the basalt forming weak carbonic acid which should disolve calcium in the basalt which will react with more CO2 to form calcium carbonbate, or in essence limestone.
Posted: Thu Jul 03, 2008 11:41 am Post subject: Re: CO2 storage
There are also two projects I'm aware of. One is a pilot project at a coal fired power plant. They are going to try to capture the CO2 from a boiler and use an injection well to dispose of the captured CO2. They are kind of quiet bout what they are up to, but from what I can tell from the apparatus, it looks like an amine absorbtion type process.
The other project uses a refrigeration system to liquify the CO2 which will be pipelined off to an oilfield and injected for EOR. The project is just starting up, but the plans are to scale this up to a truly huge, and I do mean huge, plant. Like several BCF/day.
Posted: Mon Jul 07, 2008 2:26 pm Post subject: Re: CO2 storage
I just found this site: link
It looks like there is quite a bit of interest in carbon capture, lots of studies being done and pilot projects. I remember reading an article about it in Canadian Geographic a few months ago, oh here's a link: link
Also, this one has some Q & A about the Weyburn, Saskatchewan project: link
The technology is not without problems, though, from what I've read.
Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 2:57 pm Post subject: Re: CO2 storage
WildRose wrote:
I just found this site: link
It looks like there is quite a bit of interest in carbon capture, lots of studies being done and pilot projects. I remember reading an article about it in Canadian Geographic a few months ago, oh here's a link: link
Also, this one has some Q & A about the Weyburn, Saskatchewan project: link
The technology is not without problems, though, from what I've read.
From what I gather its a giant waste of time to placate the proles at the polls. No one is ever going to do CCS except with the small exception of doing enhanced oil recovery, but thats only to get more of the stuff out of the ground. It just costs too much to be worthwhile. The only point source carbon emitting stations are coal plants, and if you add that extra cost on an existing plant you might as well rebuild the whole damned plant, in which case its cheaper to build a nuclear plant by then.
Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 6:13 pm Post subject: Re: CO2 storage
I come briefly out of my self imposed exile to say that, shocking as this it to myself, I agree here with dizzy dezzy.
When I first read about CO2 sequestration in a 2000 (or so) Scientific American issue on energy, I thought, "I hope nobody is taking these guys seriously. This is really crazy nuts stuff. We are madly UN-sequestering carbon (pumping oil, diging coal...) that has very safely been sequestered by the planet over hundreds of millions of years, and now we are going to put a tiny bandaid on that gaping wound by sequestering back some tiny fraction of what we have unsequestered, and at huge expense??? Only a society completely over the edge would even consider such an approach."
But we clearly are totally so over the edge, beyond the pale, and deeply, deeply sunk in our own stinking pile of fettid fecal refuse that it now smells sweet to us.
Of course dizzy will turn around and say, "TADA, Nuclear Power is here to rescue us from our sins!!!" If you believe him, you have sunk even deeper in the mire than your fellow wallowers.
Happy crap-treading.
And love and kissed to delirious dez.
Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 7:14 pm Post subject: Re: CO2 storage
EnCana plans to increase production from the Saskatchewan well by 50% while trapping six million tonnes of CO2 underground over the next 20 years.
Also experiments have shown that CO2 binds easily with coal. Therefore it can be used to extract methane from coal seams. The CO2 displaces the methane which is forced to the surface and can be captured and sold and the coal then absorbs the CO2.
Scientists are also working on a plan to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in rock formations.
Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 8:36 pm Post subject: Re: CO2 storage
Dezakin wrote:
The only point source carbon emitting stations are coal plants, and if you add that extra cost on an existing plant you might as well rebuild the whole damned plant
Not quite true NG production and processing generates a lot of CO2 Gas deposits range from 0 to 75% CO2 The CO2 is stripped out of the NG using one of several processes the methane is put in a pipeline and sold The CO2 is either sold, or just blown into the sky
The economics for doing this works out for the NG industry, and has for decades. Speaking as someone with a lot of professional experience with this subject, I do not think the economics of CCS will work out for stack gases from a coal-fired power plant
Stack gas is ~79% nitrogen It will require energy to treat this large amount inert gas to remove the ~15% CO2 in the flue gas
Treated natural is a salable product. Treated stack gas probably isn't.
Disposal of CO2 is another problem. CO2 is heavy, so pipelining it, especially uphill, is going to cost energy. There are risks with injecting it, like does it stay where we "store" it. It would be quite something indeed if we woke up one fine morning and found Lake Sacajawea had a pH of 2 because of a leaking CO2 storage reservoir.
I think CCS is another round of smoke and mirrors. Cap and trade did not reduce SO2 and NOx emissions because existing plants were allowed to use very liberal estimates of POTENTIAL emissions by using all sorts of trickery to set the cap. They then buy/sell these to new sources and emissions of these pollutants have increased since the 1980's in lockstep with energy development.
The proposed mercury rule that was recently shot down had the same flaw. CCS is the same game, same players.
I don't have a solution to this. (well I do, but reducing energy consumption doesn't sell). I don't think anyone else does either.
Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 8:40 pm Post subject: Re: CO2 storage
dohboi wrote:
"I hope nobody is taking these guys seriously. This is really crazy nuts stuff. We are madly UN-sequestering carbon (pumping oil, diging coal...) that has very safely been sequestered by the planet over hundreds of millions of years, and now we are going to put a tiny bandaid on that gaping wound by sequestering back some tiny fraction of what we have unsequestered, and at huge expense??? Only a society completely over the edge would even consider such an approach."
Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 10:07 pm Post subject: Re: CO2 storage
aflatoxin wrote:
Not quite true NG production and processing generates a lot of CO2 Gas deposits range from 0 to 75% CO2 The CO2 is stripped out of the NG using one of several processes the methane is put in a pipeline and sold The CO2 is either sold, or just blown into the sky
Wow. Interesting. We're told that NG produces the least CO2 of any fuel. Sounds like that might not be so true if you consider the whole process from the well to your furnace. _________________ "I was born in a deep forest
I wish I could live here all my life
I am made from stones and roots
My home, these woods and roads
All my life I loved this sound
Of the woods all around
Eagles fly where the winds blow free" -Korpiklaani
Posted: Wed Jul 09, 2008 11:34 pm Post subject: Re: CO2 storage
smallpoxgirl wrote:
aflatoxin wrote:
Not quite true NG production and processing generates a lot of CO2 Gas deposits range from 0 to 75% CO2 The CO2 is stripped out of the NG using one of several processes the methane is put in a pipeline and sold The CO2 is either sold, or just blown into the sky
Wow. Interesting. We're told that NG produces the least CO2 of any fuel. Sounds like that might not be so true if you consider the whole process from the well to your furnace.
About 75% of the energy released from the combustion of NG comes from the oxidation of the carbon. The oxidation of the hydrogen does not contribute that much to the total.
1 cubic foot of NG produces 1 cubic foot of CO2. On a mass basis, 16 pounds of methane (385 CF) produces 44 pounds of CO2 (385 CF).
If a NG pipeline moves 1 BCF/day, and there are numerous such pipelines, it is pretty easy to derive the amount of CO2 produced daily from the combustion. For each pound of Methane, figure (rounding) three pounds of CO2, plus the added (79%) nitrogen from the addition of air for combustion. CCS becomes the same problem.
Except.... NG stack emissions have a lot more dilution air added (gas turbines are air cooled from the inside) so the economics of CCS on a NG fueled source are worse than those for coal. gas turbine exhaust is ~2.5% CO2, coal plants is ~14.5%. The total exhaust flow, MW for MW is a lot higher for NG fueled sources.
Given this, plus adding the energy needed for E&P, processing, and compression, I'm not that convinced that NG is any less Carbon-intensive than coal. The big advantage is that as a fuel, the Sulfur can be removed from NG before it's burned, and that is a lot cheaper than treating stack gas. (for the same reason that CO2 removal in NG is easier than CO2 removal from flue gas). NG produces no particulate emissions worth mentioning when burned, and when it's spilled it disperses, it doesn't make a mess. Yes, it is a hell of a lot cleaner than coal, but the CO2 emissions, gas well to furnace, maybe not that much of an improvement.
IMO, the CO2 rhetoric that comes from the NG industry is like the "more doctors smoke camels" BS that the tobacco industry spewed 50 years ago.
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