Educated" opinions on climate change - Part 4 27

[owg]

Thanks David. I see Genesee IGCC CCS project is going ahead in Alberta with provincial funding. I think this is to convert natural gas into electical power and "carbon dioxide for enhanced oil recovery or permanent storage in deep saline aquifers." I suppose it makes a very big difference to the economics and possibly t the energy balance, depending on who is counting, whether you get oil or nothing in return.

HAZOP at

http://www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[cranky108]

I don't think the co2 injection is a capture stragity. It is a stradigy to increase oil production. The co2 capture is just a feel good after thought.

Has any one consitered tree farms? They capture co2 and produce building materials. The trees can also be converted to home heating fuel (wood or pellets).
Probally to expencive because of taxes, but a good goverment activity.

 

[owg]

Correction - The Genesee IGCC feeds coal not natural gas. See url attached.

HAZOP at www.curryhydrocarbons.ca

 

[zdas04]

Both Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) and Enhanced Coalbed Methane (ECBM) can have some great economics. There are several companies today that are trying to link people with emissions "problems" with people who want to do EOR or ECBM. I looked at one of these projects last year and the total economics were marginally positive, then the price of natural gas plummeted and the project got shelved.

ECBM is pretty cool because coal has a huge capacity to actually capture CO2 into the coal matrix for nearly permanent storage. EOR is not so great since the gas sits in the pore volume which really can't hold all that much so you start getting breakthrough pretty rapidly.

The biggest problem with both EOR and ECBM as a carbon capture scheme is proximity. A power plant in Maine probably doesn't have economical access to a field that could benefit from injecting the gas. Where the proximity is reasonable, it makes more sense than the rest of the "carbon capture" ideas floating around.

David

 

[hokie66]

cranky,

Tree farms are everywhere, to produce building materials, as you said. Ever been to Georgia? Driven by economics, but they are good for the environment when properly managed.

 

[GregLocock]

I must confess, much as I like trees, I can't see why people argue that tree farms are carbon capture systems. Sure, while they grow they absorb CO2, but when they are cut down some huge proportion is immediately returned to the environment, and the bit that is taken offsite has rather finite life, unless it gets turned into part of a building, or a book that never gets burned.



Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[jmw]

I recall Georgia from the 70's as being like one big pine forest in the piedmont area - from Stone Mountain, Atlanta was visible as a couple of tall buildings rising above the trees.

All these years later, there are far fewer trees.

However, I understand that managed woodland in the US is quite healthy.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[cranky108]

Maybe I like trees because in the West there isen't that many because of water issues.

Coal may have an ability to capture CO2, but it also can produce CH4 in harvestable quantities. And in fact if it isen't harvested it is usally released anyway.
Sort of like U238 which will divide anyway if left in the ground.


What if harvested trees are surmurged under water? Would that be a good method to store carbon? Yes eventually it will reappear, but it coult be stored for several hundred years. Sort of like dying fish sinking to the ocean bottom, to become part of the bottom muck.

 

[hokie66]

Cut trees and dump them in the ocean? How do you make them sink? Sounds as good as some of the other harebrained schemes around.

 

[zdas04]

Coal does not "produce" CH4 as in a conversion of the coal matrix becoming methane. Methane is stored at "adsorption sites" on the coal surface. These sites cam hold any molecule that fits. In many Coalbed Methane (CBM) or Coalseam gas (CSG) fields, the adsorption sites are more suited to CO2 than CH4, so injecting CO2 into a field like the San Juan Basin in New Mexico or Fairview in Queensland will actually sequester CO2 and liberate CH4. That is what ECBM is all about.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

http://www.muleshoe-eng.com

Please see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips Fora.

Remember, being ignorant isn't your fault; staying ignorant is.

 

[csd72]

Some interesting politically charged comments here, but I think some people have got the wrong end of the stick.

Carbon tax is not about reducing consumption of electricity e.t.c. it is about encouraging the market to come up with more environmentally efficient methods.

At the moment, if there is a choice between a super dirty coal plant and a very clean gas plant (or whatever) that costs 10% more to build then it will be the coal plant that gets built.

Consumers will tend to buy the cheapest fuel regardless of their economic status.

There is also the question of global fairness, at the moment the richest 10% of countries is consuming more than half of the resources. When china and india reach economic prosperity there will not be enough resources to go around at current consumption.

We will pay for it either way, either now by a carbon tax, or later when the resources finally run out.

 

[ornerynorsk]

I'm no environmental scientist, but I believe the whole thing is pure bunk intended as a revenue strategy for world governments, and to incite us lackeys into a state of fear so we will "remain in our proper places".

Anyone up for a good read? Google "peak oil myth". Sadly a number of anti-Semitic websites come up, one has to filter through the garbage. The Russians began trials in 1970 with ultra deep bore holes and under-reaming techniques and had some amazing results. Also check out White Tiger field info in Vietnam.

 

[cranky108]

If CH4 can be extracted from a coal seam, and it will become exausted at some point, then it would be ripe for CO2 insertion. Why would you want to waste the CH4?

If as on TV, some logs sink whan water loged, then this could work as a carbon storage stradgy. Not perfect, but possible.

Actually natural gas power plants are cheeper to build than coal plants. But given the price difference in the two, and the limits on the production and importation of natural gas, coal plants are perfered. Except for peaking plants where the opertional time is rather short.

Exception: new ICCG plants are soon to be under trials to prove the theory, which provides coal as a fuel, and lower construction cost, as well as higher efficency.

So far I haven't seen much talk about co-fuel firing. Where coal and saw dust are used for power production. (Maybe coal and wood chips).

 

[controlnovice]

Holy cr@p!

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/science/07/07/carbon.emissions.allocation/index.html

It's already starting.

The method sets national targets for reducing carbon emissions based on the number of high-income earners in each country, following the theory that people who earn more generate more CO2.

"It's fairer than some other ideas out there in the sense that we attribute responsibility for emission reductions based only on the number of high-emitting people in the country -- if the country has large number of people who are high-emitters then it has more work to do," said Shoibal Chakravarty, a research scholar at Princeton Environmental Institute.

When researchers at Princeton started working on the project two years ago, one of their first aims was to find a reliable way to estimate the average emissions of high-income earners.

Note how they are only looking at ways to estimate the emissions of high-income earners. What about others?



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This is normally the space where people post something insightful.

 

[ornerynorsk]

Hi Controlnovice,

Isn't that nice? Just another thinly veiled form of communism at its best.

 

[SnTMan]

This whole carbon cap/tax/credit/permit/trading thing just looks to me like a new arena for the brokers, traders, wheelers and dealers to make truly large sums of money while providing no useful goods or services, said money being provided by all consumers in the form of increased costs for everything.

Until the bubbles burst, the schemes collapse, etc. then guess who gets stuck with the bills (again)?

Regards,

Mike

 

[jmw]

Like buying a carbon offset when you fly somewhere... what the hell is it and what do they do with the money?

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[zdas04]

SnTMan,
I think you nailed it. This cluster is going to make the UN "Oil for Food" fiasco look like petty larceny. The magnitude of opportunity for graft, corruption, and outright theft is going to be staggering. A 500 MW coal-fired plant puts 1.2 million metric tonnes of CO2 up the stack each year. Current estimates put the opening trades in the $30-50 USD/tonne so this one moderately sized plant would be subject to some portion of $50 million USD/year. Multiply that times 10,000 power plants and 100,000 large industrial concerns with nearly as much emissions and the number gets really big. Lots of room for Bernie Madoff and his ilk to do reasonably well.

David

 

[MGXFP]

This is just like going to a medieval priest and paying a handsome sum to pardon our (environmental) sins.

It could also be yet another way to hose the 'rich' for more taxes.

I understand piggybacked on the cap and trade bill is a measure to create yet another federal branch of government to enforce new building standards akin to the standards of the State of California. Basing national policy on a failed state's policy only makes sense!

 

[moltenmetal]

SNTMan: I agree with you completely- I'm totally against the cap and trade process for that reason.

A carbon tax is simpler to implement and harder to evade, with fewer parasites able to make a buck from it.

jmw: the carbon offset analogy to buying "indulgences" is also dead on. If we value the things these offset folks are doing, we should be paying for the work directly out of the carbon tax revenue, not through some little green middleman.