CCS: ENGINEERING COAL

The Good News: With all the emphasis on test projects, Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) technology will soon be clearly seen for what it is. The Bad News: Despite politicians' promises, we still don't know exactly what it is.

Coal’s Energy Potential Is an Engineering Challenge Now
Matthew L. Wald, May 1, 2007 (NY Times)
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WHO
- US political leaders Senator Jeff Bingaman (Dem., New Mexico) chairman, Energy and Natural Resources Committee; Senator Pete V. Domenici (Rep, New Mexico) committee ranking minority member; The Department of Energy (DOE), Samuel Bodman, secretary.
- US coal industry leaders and engineers including Mark Gray, vice president/engineering services, American Electric Power, and Michael W. Rencheck, senior vice president/ engineering projects, American Electric Power.

WHAT
Using the vast US reserves of coal for energy rests on engineering a solution for the dreadful greenhouse gas emissions created as a by-product of burning it. Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) is a technology PERHAPS in the process of being mastered. Political leaders are attempting to incentivize development with public policy measures.

WHEN
Projects are being developed. The race is on.

WHERE
Experiments of all four experimental CCS technologies are on-going. An innovative project involving ammonia will unfold at American Electric plants in Wisconsin, West Virginia and Oklahoma.

WHY
- There are at least a dozen CCS proposals before congress.
- Sample proposals for capture: Freezing gases coming from smokestacks; binding gases to liquid chemically; modify the coal before burning; alter the air in which it is burned. - One of the biggest obstacles is that the gases from burned coal are only 12% CO2 and 78% nitrogen.
- Sequestration (storage) is also unsettled: pumping it into old oil fields is an unsatisfactory proposal.
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- DOE is funding “FutureGen” to develop a CCS technology called Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (I.G.C.C.) but failures so far have led to the nickname “NeverGen.” Coal is burned into carbon monoxide and hydrogen while steam is simultaneously generated and mixed with the CO to make CO2 for sequestration while the hydrogen and the steam generate electricity. Retrofitting IGCC technology to traditional “pulverized coal” plants presents problems.
- Private coal is developing two other technologies. One uses almost pure oxygen to burn coal, leaving mostly CO2 which is more easily captured. But taking out the nitrogen may cost more energy than is produced. The second uses ammonia to strip the CO2 by first chilling and then heating the ammonia.

QUOTES
Gray: “Coal has to be in our energy mix, because of its value for society and its importance to the country…We have enough coal for anywhere from 200 to 450 years.”