More On Cost of Artificial Methods (More MIT)

Another very detailed (115 pages) analysis from MIT, this time covering costs...

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The following storage options were evaluated in this study:

• Enhanced oil recovery
• Enhanced coalbed methane recovery
• Depleted oil reservoir storage
• Depleted gas reservoir storage
• Deep saline aquifer storage
• Ocean storage via pipeline
• Ocean storage via tanker

For each option, the CO2 source is a nominal 500 MWe gross Integrated Gasification Cycle (IGCC) plant, operating at an 80 percent capacity factor. This plant deliversof CO2 per day. Given this source of CO2, a baseline conceptual design was generated option. From the baseline conceptual design, capital and O&M costs, and an economic with several figures of merits were developed. These were then used to develop
life cycle analyses. In the case of the ocean storage options, it is assumed that three IGCC power plants to a shoreline collection point. Based on this, the ocean storage systems need to handle three times the quantity of CO2, i.e. 22,167 tonnes of CO2 per day.

NETL Carbon Sequestration Newsletter Oct 2005

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Contents:

Business Wire, “GE Energy, Bechtel Get Approval from AEP to
Proceed with Plans for IGCC Project; A Milestone for Cleaner
Coal Technology in the United States.”

New York Times, “Steps to Limit Global-Warming Gas.”

The Australian, Gorgon Project Reaches Environmental
Impact Statement (EIS) Stage.

.” “Radical method may
bury gas plant,”

PWR Newswire, “FutureGen Industrial Alliance Announced.”

Onpoint, “DOE Official Talks About FutureGen, explains
blueprint for DOE's zero-emissions coal plant.”

Delay of Effective Date for the 1605b Program
Revised Guidelines.

Change Policy
Partnership.”

Details on Coal-Seq IV Forum.
“Heat Wave makes plants warm planet.”

Carbon Sequestration in Soils

From The USGS Web Site:

Carbon enters the soil as roots, litter, harvest residues, and animal manure. It is stored primarily as soil organic matter (SOM). The density (weight/volume) of carbon is highest near the soil surface. But much of the most recently deposited SOM decomposes rapidly, releasing CO2 to the atmosphere.

Some carbon becomes stabilized, especially in the lower part of the soil profile. Balanced rates of input and decomposition determine steady state carbon fluxes. However, in many parts of the world, agriculture and other land-use activities have upset the natural balance in the soil carbon cycle, contributing to an alarming increase in carbon release from soils to the atmosphere in the form of CO2.

Carbon sequestration in soils is a climate-change-mitigating strategy based on the assumption that movement, or flux, of carbon from the air to the soil can be increased while the release of carbon from the soil back to the atmosphere is decreased. In other words, certain activities can transform soil from a carbon source (emits carbon) into a carbon sink (absorbs carbon). This transformation has the potential to reduce atmospheric CO2, thereby slowing global warming and mitigating climate change.

At the same time, carbon sequestration can confer substantial benefits on the people in a region, such as farmers and small landholders, who directly manage the soil carbon pool. Improved land and soil management practices that help sequester carbon in soils can lead to higher soil fertility, increased yields, and other outcomes that aid local populations economically, environmentally, and socially. Carbon sequestration in soils also has great potential in regard to the international trading of carbon credits, where one nation may offset its carbon emissions by supporting carbon sequestration in some other part of the world.

Currently, researchers at the USGS/EROS Data Center are involved in collaborative carbon sequestration projects in West Africa and Central Asia.

How Will CO2 Capture and Storage Work?

How Will Carbon Capture and Storage Work?

From The Guardian June 2005

"Crudely, the carbon dioxide spewed from power stations will be, well, captured and stored. But there the problems begin. The government may have pledged £25m to help the climate change busting technology along earlier this week, but significant obstacles remain with two parts of the plan: capture and storage.

Capture first. "It's always going to cost money to capture something. It isn't a free exercise," points out Harry Audus, a chemical engineer who now heads the International Energy Agency's greenhouse gas programme in Cheltenham. Carbon dioxide, unfortunately, is just one ingredient in the cocktail of waste gases that emerges from the business end of a power station. For the technology, also known as carbon sequestration, to work, it must be separated.

This can be done: amine scrubbers that chemically isolate the carbon dioxide are fitted to several power stations in the US. But in that case local industries are willing to pay for the pure gas.

"The older power stations aren't that efficient and if you stick another process on the back end you make them even less efficient, which isn't the thing to do really," Audus says. Pumps for the scrubber chemicals and compressors for the carbon dioxide all drain power from a station's already relatively meagre output.

Other ideas aim to clean up fossil fuel before it is burned. George Bush favours turning coal into hydrogen gas (called gasification) and the Swedish power company Vattenfall is building an "oxyfuel" plant near Berlin that will tear air apart so it can use just oxygen to ignite coal. Both processes are in their infancy but both produce carbon dioxide in a more readily captured form.

Storage is less technically demanding; the Norwegian company Statoil has been pumping CO2 into a sandstone layer under the North Sea for years. The issues here are long-term safety and short-term legality.
Various treaties probably prohibit CO2 being dumped under the North Sea unless it is used to squeeze oil out in the other direction. A fluctuating oil price has helped make energy companies who own the necessary infrastructure reluctant to get involved.

Nothing seems to have leaked from the 6m tonnes of CO2 pumped underground by Statoil so far, but geologists continue to monitor the situation."